this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2026
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316
Pet owners say smart pet feeder outage led to furry ones going unfed (arstechnica.com)
submitted 2 days ago by new_otters_raft@piefed.ca to c/technology@lemmy.world
121 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

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).

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[–] tal@lemmy.today 19 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I have someone coming for check-ins, but they can’t come in 5 times every day to give food,” a Reddit user said.

You can pamper your cat however you want, but your cat is not going to die if they don't have someone portioning out food five times a day.

[–] stoy@lemmy.zip 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The cat we had when I grew up was perfectly fine with having a bowl of dry feed over the day and night, getting wet food in the evenings.

[–] littlewonder@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Some cats can't have free access to food or they get fat. Some cats can with no weight gain. I have two sister cats where one is the latter and one is the former.