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
124 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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[–] Passerby6497@lemmy.world 2 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago)

That's the kind of limitation I have on mine, but that's because I have a wireless zigbee plug instead of a real timer, but it's because I can better change schedules. It's reliable like 95% of the time, which is good enough for normal use, but I'd be pissed if I paid for an AIO unit that required an active connection to work. At least mine is all on my own network, so it's (usually) my own fault when something goes sideways