I've lost trust ..."

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).

  • ProfessorozoneEnglish
    1·
    3 hours ago

    They totally can. We used to have a super low tech one. It was like an old cookie timer. You crank a wheel over to the number of hours you wanted (so it only worked over a day or so)and a spring inside just turned the crank back until a little hole lined up with a notch allowing the door to open. There were two bins inside one device, so two feedings. No batteries. No Internet.