- cross-posted to:
- nottheonion@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- nottheonion@lemmy.world
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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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
And this is why you use local only devices fools.
Get yourself a Zigbee Pet Feeder and pair it with Home Assistant and you’re good to go.
Which do you recommend?
Aquara C1. Use Home Assistant and your own Zigbee antenna.
$89 isn’t terrible
I got the cheapest timer-based one I could find ($18) and spliced the 5v motor wires with a Shelly switch (flashed for local-only matter).
I settled on this solution after 3 prior attempts with more expensive feeders because none of them let me control portions and regularity adequately, which ultimately comes down to “cycle hopper motor N seconds at T1, T2, … , TK for K meals/day.”
That’s been doing its job for nearly two years, cat’s weight stabilized, and his feast/famine eating behaviors disappeared, so I couldn’t recommend anything more complex than that.
ETA: only important if you travel but…
Also added a small relay that reconnects internal AA battery pack on power loss. Which converts unit back to a self-contained timer-based feeder.
The only time that has triggered is when unplugging the unit to clean or when I’ve accidentally turned off the power strip’s energy monitor plug. Not important unless you’re away from home a lot and/or outages are common in your area.
I’ve got a dispenser that basically works like a gumball machine. Goes every day and only needs to be refilled maybe once every month or two. Even has a battery backup in case the power goes out while we’re on vacation or something. No need for smart home integration, just listen to your pet when they complain that they don’t have any food, and make sure you’re full up before leaving for an extended amount of time.
Why in fuck would a device that activates a motor once or twice a day on a schedule need any kind of network connectivity? This is an ultra-dumb programmatic function, it shouldn’t need any more compute power than an alarm clock. Why would you hook it up to a smart home anything?
It should be exactly this complicated:
Anything beyond that is like killing a housefly with a bazooka.
The ability to play with it, without having to fiddle with tiny switches is a big feature to many. Often these are used by people with mobility issues. The ability to add an extra feed, due to exercise, or adjust the timings to account for changes in life plans are a godsend to many.
Smart home devices are a balancing act. The extra control means more can also go wrong. Minimising that is a big part. The most critical is making it behave sanely when it suddenly goes offline. E.g. smart light switches become dumb ones, when the central hub goes down.
OK, add a simple remote control with buttons for adjusting the schedule and triggering a manual feed. No need for that to be any more complicated than a TV remote from the 90s. Keep it offline, no problem.
To each their own. I prefer having the ability to adjust things from 1 central source. I’m prone to losing remotes.
Also, how would you do such a remote. You would also need a screen for feedback etc, which puts you back at square 1.
Also, a remote would be considerably more expensive than the extra cost of a ZigBee/Wifi enabled microcontroller.
To each their own. I prefer having the ability to adjust things from 1 central source. I’m prone to losing remotes.
My preference is for devices to be as simple and reliable and end-user repairable as possible. I have an aversion to any kind of appliance that might be dependent on someone else to update software or maintain a network service to keep operational. No software dependence at all if possible, just a basic microcontroller and firmware. Again, there’s nothing to this that needs to be any more advanced or complicated than the functions of a basic alarm clock like this:
Instead of setting off an alarm, we’re activating the feeding mechanism. Dead simple. Hell, you could probably make this yourself by wiring the alarm from a clock like this to a motor that moves the feeding mechanism.
Also, how would you do such a remote. You would also need a screen for feedback etc, which puts you back at square 1.
Nah, there’s no reason feeding times need to be any more granular than per-hour. You can show that with a 2x6 grid of 12 indicator LEDs, with a 13th AM/PM indicator. On lights indicate hours when feeding will activate. You could have that on both the remote and the feeder, cheap and easy. Maybe you have a 14th indicator that lights up if the food in the storage bin is low and needs refilling.
Also, a remote would be considerably more expensive than the extra cost of a ZigBee/Wifi enabled microcontroller.
Definitely not, because it’s not fair to count the cost of only the link hardware on the feeder, you have to account for the cost of the rest of the smart home system to operate it. A remote like this is dirt cheap:
You’re over thinking what this really needs to do. It’s a timer that activates a switch, that’s all.
It’s worth noting that I think both should exist.
No software dependence at all if possible, just a basic microcontroller and firmware.
Agreed, I just want a ZigBee endpoint as well.
As for the smart home stuff, I already have it in place, so it’s no additional expense.
Control wise, your method would be fine for someone techie and motivated. It would annoy the hell out of some non techies, particularly if they had vision issues (think OAP). It would also close down the option of relatives helping out by monitoring it remotely.
As I said, different target audiences. Both have their places. I just wish the smart option did its job properly, rather than the half baked options we keep getting.
Totally agree (keep it simple) and I use a simple timer failsafe on mine, but just pointing out:
Minimum interval of that plug will fill the bowl jam the motor. Gears will strip without intervention.
Nbd tho, you can wire up a secondary timer relay circuit for portion control. Just keep the wires tidy, and raised if there’s a water bowl nearby.
And probably don’t want 220 anywhere near the feeding area so use a 5v wall wart or whatever.
Eh, might also want to consider a battery backup option in case power goes out while you’re on a work trip.
Just make sure to keep both interfaces accessible for later manual adjustments. Can take a while to dial it in, you know, based on current activity levels, which can change seasonally. Also be ready to fuck with it pretty much any time you switch their feed.
Etc etc
I kid — I’m sure you get why nerdy control freaks wire these things up to HA and whatever
Gotta find one (cheap) that doesn’t do the wrrrr-tick-tick-tick 24/7 though.
It would be nice if there is list of devices/companies which support local integration, it there anything?
Repeat after me: Local control. Local control. Local control.
“The Cloud” is just other people’s computers.
Home Assistant, my beloved.
Spread your knowledge, but most are not motivated or equipped
But people no longer have computers at home. More and more rely on just phones or can’t even use anything else.
“So we create an unnecessary dependency to force them to upgrade whenever shareholders demand it. There’s a slight chance a malfunction will starve cats to death buuuuuut….”
There is always a switchbot.
It literally presses or releases a button at given times. You program it with BT and no wifi needed.Its not hard to just put some food in a bowl. Not every damn thing needs automation.
It’s actually pretty handy, and can be useful for portion control too.
There is no reason it should require a cloud connection.
can be useful for portion control too.
Useful for those of us born without hands and brains.
There are situations in which this device helps a lot:
- Portion control
- Preventing other cats from stealing food
- Keeping the kibbles dry with silica gel packs
- Automating food when the owner is away for some days
If you work long shifts or overnights, maybe your cats need food more often, so what do you do. Free feed, but many experts advise against that. Well, there are various options.
i don’t have one yet, but we’re planning to get one so we can go on overnight or even maybe 2-3 day trips without having to rely on someone coming around to feed the pets
The cheaper non smart ones work all by themselves, no cloud needed. They don’t have an app to control it unfortunately though.
nice, that’s probably what we’ll go with, thanks 🙏
God forbid the user have to push a button on the device itself.
overnight is fine but for 2,3 days still have someone drop by to check if things are fine at least once. i read horror stories of cats being cats and landing badly from a sleeping spot and breaking a leg, or cats in a freak accident turning on the hair dryer which proceeded to blow warm air into the apartment for the whole night. and of course insanse stuff like that will happen when nobody is there to check in.
I think that he means just put 2-3 days of food out.
If the cat eats wet food, that’d have spoiling problems, but I suppose that it’d probably be okay with dry kibble.
Some cats are psycho about food. Mine definitely, and screams at me for hours a day even though he knows when feeding time is and he still has food from breakfast. People recommend an automatic feeder because the cat stops associating the person with feeding time and bothers the feeder instead. I haven’t tried it yet, but it makes sense to me and would probably work on the fat cunt
It doesn’t need it, no, but it makes life a little easier. And in this world of constant demands on our attention and time, making our lives a little easier is a vast blessing.
When I think of accessibility, I find it plausible that it’s not just convenient but essential or necessary for some people.
They almost died because you are a shitty owner
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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.
Oh for the love of god… If you’re too busy to feed your companions you don’t need a companion.
automatically dispense food
Okay
use an app to set it up
Makes sense
cloud outage caused missed feedings
wtf? Doesn’t the thing have an internal clock? Doesn’t it just set a cron job? Seriously, if you want to farm data all day long, do that and just send it back. But if having to be online to do its core function is required, that’s extremely poor design.
They can’t charge a subscription for an internal clock
Or push ads, or gather data on users.
An app is always a red flag, especially if it’s the only way you can interact with the device.
WTF does it need to be on the cloud to operate? More why is it on the cloud in the first place?
And all these spyware apps, enough is enough.
Sounds like a dumb way to feed your pet that the device can’t work without the cloud. Nothing new but still you have to be real stupid to buy a device that will one day be cut off when the company abandons support.
Ah yes, the classic “the stupid consumers are stupid” argument.
This was sold as being an offline-capable device. It even has battery slots for power outages.
Perhaps instead of shitting on people for buying something they thought would be nice and work well, we shit on the company that can’t even give a pet feeder an on-device offline schedule after selling people on a device that’s supposed to work offline and even during power outages.
And figure out how we can hack it and enable folks to control the hardware they own, because they weren’t stupid for buying a pet feeder. The company that runs it just does so in a moronic way.
(I don’t own one of these, but I have considered it a few times, and this just pisses me off)
So is it poor design or cases where users didn’t put batteries in?
Any cloud connected device that stops functioning when there is a outage is stupid. Its stupid to buy one.
What about a device that can function offline?
Yes. That is what I’m saying.
But that’s what they bought. That’s what was advertised and sold to them.
It was just false advertising.
I’ve bought two cloud connected devices that promised manual control. Only one did. It was the first thing I did was verify it was true by never using the cloud part of it.
Hmm… Maybe they should make people feeders.
wtf why is it requiring wifi for a mechanism that should simply just rely on electricity if nothing else?
Because they want to steal and sell your data. C’mon, keep up.
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
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
