cross-posted from: https://piefed.ca/c/technology@lemmy.world/p/902391/pet-owners-say-smart-pet-feeder-outage-led-to-furry-ones-going-unfed
This feels like bad design
Smart pet-feeder company Petlibro suffered an outage on Tuesday, giving users a harsh reminder of the risks of relying on smart devices.
Petlibro makes pet feeders that connect to Wi-Fi and, for setup with Petlibro’s mobile companion app, Bluetooth. Users can set the feeders to automatically dispense food at scheduled times, which is handy for pet care when the owner is out of the home.
In a statement to The Verge, Petlibro CEO York Wu said this week’s outage was “related to how the Petlibro app communicates with devices through its online servers.”
Some user reports have also conflicted with Petlibro’s claims about offline functionality. As The Verge pointed out, various users online claimed that during the outage, their devices did not perform any scheduled feedings, performed some feedings but not others, or performed feedings late (examples here, here, here, here, and here).
How is it smart to have an app driven pet feeder that relies on Internet connection?
Why not just have one where you adjust and push a button on the feeder? You freaking have to fill it anyway!
This sounds like pure stupidity IMO. But then again we do it 100% manually, and the cat will absolutely remind us if there is no food.Why even have a pet if you don’t want to feed it. One of the highlights for the pet connecting to the owner!
I think an automatic feeder can be useful when you’re not at home for a while, it just boggles my mind why this thing doesn’t store the programmed timer locally on the device, and instead relies on 24/7 internet connection
Because businesses are not in the business of providing valuable products and services that improve our lives; they are in the business of extracting value and maximizing profits by any means necessary.
When you see businesses like Microsoft signing contracts with Israel to help the IDF efficiently genocide Palestinians, do you genuinely believe they wouldn’t do the same to you the moment it becomes their most lucrative option?? Do you believe they would draw some arbitrary line in the sand between genocides, and magically reject profiting off your murder, imprisonment, or enslavement?
Even then! They can have WiFi for remote managing and still just store the program locally. Just seems wasteful for no reason, most people buying a WiFi pet feeder will connect it to the internet anyway.
Yes I get it for vacations, although even then we don’t use it, but just put extra food out so there is enough for the duration. If a cat has learned from it was little that food is not a shortage item my experience is that they rarely overeat. Giving them a little too little every day however, and you will get a cat that can never have enough.
They make ones that do, I have one. It does not connect to the internet at all. It also has battery backup in case the power goes out. Insane that the company forced WiFi connection on these other models.
We got one so we could go on vacation while owning a cat who would 100% eat all the food he could fit, vomit, and then keep eating.
With the auto feeder we just had someone stop by once a day for litter and such.Definitely not networked though. That just seems like bad design purely from a “building a feeder” side. Why would you want to manage servers to coordinate pet feeding? At most an app that can set the timers, but it’s not so hard to offload that actual tracking to the device.
vomit, and then keep eating.
Maybe we’ve been lucky, but we’ve never had that problem.
Definitely not networked though. That just seems like bad design
Indeed, automatic feeders have existed long before we even had Internet.
Yeah, he was the runt of the litter we think, and abandoned by his mother. We pulled him out from under a neighbor’s porch and got him through it, but he always has a bit of a frantic urgency around food time, even for a cat. Our other cat was 100% good with one of those gravity feeders and would just graze over the course of the day and keep himself at a good weight.
We’ve kept the auto feeder around so the one can get five or six smaller meals throughout the day, since he eats so fast a normal portion often causes issues.
It’s basically a dumb alarm clock that drops food in tablespoon increments. Only features I wish it had that it doesn’t is an “I’m nearly empty” sensor that could flash a light, and the ability to sync it’s clock with the radio broadcast time signal, since it drifts waaay more than you would expect and we need to reset the clock every month.
Hey, it says smart feeder, not smart owner…
Yeah but it’s not much of a smart feeder if it can’t tell the time without being told/asking someone else.
For some reason I pictured a grandfather clock asking, “should I chime yet?”
Because pets are accessories, not companions
Yes, that must be it.
Never buy something that unjustifiably requires to be connected to a cloud server to work.
Fine, you know what, corporations gonna corporate, yes you need our companion app so we can datafarm your phone and continue to extract wealth from you after purchase.
Okay, but I ask WHY does this not have offline local storage to keep operating when offline?
Yeah, there’s been timed feeders longer than there’s been wifi, and I’m sure the first had old-school and modern, but it’s been long enough people stopped wanting to pay for both.
But even doing what your talking about, my wifi thermostat still works without wifi if I walk over to it. My smart plugs still do their normal timed schedules.
An internal clock and a tiny piece of flash memory is all it takes.
But that’s like $0.05 per unit, and a corporation will always cut that corner.
Bruh what. It’s a fucking clock that turns a gear.
Oh gosh. Amateurs. Surely maintain last schedule stored locally and only update if connected and change present.
Why do they have pets?
Why the hell does anyone need an app to feed a pet?
Use this when you’re home:
Use this when you’re gone for a couple of days:
