posted in Technology

new_otters_raft@new_otters_raft@piefed.ca

Pet owners say smart pet feeder outage led to furry ones going unfed

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).

arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/08/pet-owners-say-smart-pet-feeder-outage-led-to-furry-ones-going-unfed/
wonderingwanderer@wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz

Replying to an earlier post

It is bad design. The entire system control could be on a microcontroller inside the machine itself. There’s no reason to route data through a cloud server just for basic functionality (other than greedy data farming, of course).

That’s a single point of failure, and not even very reliable, for something that provides a basic necessity to a living being.

That being said, any pet owner who relies on an automated feeder and doesn’t check it regularly to make sure it’s working properly, is neglecting their pets. They share a portion of the responsibility here.

Still, I wish products marketed for pets were regulated better to ensure safety.

en