this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2026
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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
123 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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[–] ramble81@lemmy.zip 135 points 2 days ago (2 children)

automatically dispense food

Okay

use an app to set it up

Makes sense

cloud outage caused missed feedings

wtf? Doesn’t the thing have an internal clock? Doesn’t it just set a cron job? Seriously, if you want to farm data all day long, do that and just send it back. But if having to be online to do its core function is required, that’s extremely poor design.

[–] ThatGuy46475@lemmy.world 97 points 2 days ago (1 children)

They can’t charge a subscription for an internal clock

[–] NaibofTabr@infosec.pub 29 points 2 days ago

Or push ads, or gather data on users.

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

An app is always a red flag, especially if it's the only way you can interact with the device.