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).
I’ve had cats all my life and never had one that couldn’t have a bowl of food out at all times. Throwing up doesn’t mean they eat too much, just that they eat too fast, like, yanno, when they think they’re going to be starving until the next meal.
So you tried to defeat someone else’s experience with an anecdote where you have not had that experience. What even are you trying to say here?
Lots of people’s cats have behaviors like this. Feeding them a certain amount on a fixed schedule helps. We have six cats. One of them is like this. It’s a pain in the ass.
Especially if you’re away from home
Nah, some are just wired like this.