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).
I got the cheapest timer-based one I could find ($18) and spliced the 5v motor wires with a Shelly switch (flashed for local-only matter).
I settled on this solution after 3 prior attempts with more expensive feeders because none of them let me control portions and regularity adequately, which ultimately comes down to “cycle hopper motor N seconds at T1, T2, … , TK for K meals/day.”
That’s been doing its job for nearly two years, cat’s weight stabilized, and his feast/famine eating behaviors disappeared, so I couldn’t recommend anything more complex than that.
ETA: only important if you travel but…
Also added a small relay that reconnects internal AA battery pack on power loss. Which converts unit back to a self-contained timer-based feeder.
The only time that has triggered is when unplugging the unit to clean or when I’ve accidentally turned off the power strip’s energy monitor plug. Not important unless you’re away from home a lot and/or outages are common in your area.