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 3 days ago by new_otters_raft@piefed.ca to c/technology@lemmy.world
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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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[–] underscores@lemmy.zip 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

it's because shareholders want the company to "innovate" and in a space where nothing can really improve these devices people will add whatever is new or trendy. IoT and cloud stuff is still very trendy. I wouldn't be surprised if there were startups or devices based on AI pet feeder tech.

Not because it's new and good, but because shareholders want money to go up.

[–] UnLocoPoco@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

True. One can only innovate so much in a particular product. So, every company irrespective of requirement is putting "AI" into their products just to make investors happy which in turn screws cust experience in a lot of cases. The best example is AI customer service desk. Oh god! It's rare these days to get human support. Seems like every company has onboarded AI support system