this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2026
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306
Pet owners say smart pet feeder outage led to furry ones going unfed (arstechnica.com)
submitted 1 week ago by new_otters_raft@piefed.ca to c/technology@lemmy.world
116 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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[–] Smoogs@lemmy.world 42 points 1 week ago (2 children)

wtf why is it requiring wifi for a mechanism that should simply just rely on electricity if nothing else?

[–] BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 1 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

Because they want to steal and sell your data. C'mon, keep up.

[–] Smoogs@lemmy.world 0 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Calm down. My question isn't to me or them. It's to the average consumer who would buy this who isn't asking these questions about the products putting their pets at risk

[–] Aneb@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago

This is reminding me of the copypasta where the it admin keeps a gun next to the printer.

Also my automatic pet feeder is dumb and only runs on electric