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).
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.
This article says it’s an issue with smart devices. It isn’t. There are issues with them (mostly security), but this isn’t that. This is an issue with making always-online services that have no need for it. There is absolutely zero reason this device should ever connect to the internet. The intranet should have everything it needs. The device should have its own clock (which I’m certain it does, or it wouldn’t operate), and a connection should only be needed to change settings. Maybe it should expose itself to be connected to externally by your app to change settings or check status when you’re away, but it shouldn’t require a connection.
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.
They save money by offloading the processing to your phone.
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.
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.
Which do you recommend?
Aquara C1. Use Home Assistant and your own Zigbee antenna.
$89 isn’t terrible
wtf why is it requiring wifi for a mechanism that should simply just rely on electricity if nothing else?
Fun fact, companies want every piece of data you’re willing to give them, including your pets. Not to mention that the average person doesn’t realize the risk of connecting a device to the internet.
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
To everyone criticizing the people who bought the device: It is sold as being capable of running without internet, and it often does. The problem is that some update along the way broke this functionality ( maybe on purpose ).
The device has 3 D batteries to survive even power outages.
I’m not defending the company, I absolute despise them, they lied to consumers and should suffer a class action lawsuit.
I have a Petlibro, but one of the old ones that has no cloud connection and no app. You just program it on the feeders interface itself. From a mechanical standpoint they are pretty awesome and feeding the proper amount of food is so much easier than doing it manually.
Yeah, now imagine how much better (/s) that would be if “the cloud” was looped in to the timer so that any network outage or server outage or successful hack or DoS attack caused your feeder to malf.
It needs wifi???
Your feeding schedule writes a cron job on their server, which then runs and commands your feeder to operate. Standard pattern.
/jk (I hope)
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
The level of sophistication of our pet feeder at home is a fistful of kibble pulled out of a bag and dropped in a bowl. If we’re away, we have a good neighbour who drops in to check on the cat, or the cat stays with my family. I’m an IT professional, and prefer my house to be as dumb as possible.
Of course I will post a picture of my cat when mentioning him. His name is Nemo.
Nemo is such a beauty, he looks very soft and cuddly.
Thank you. He’s indeed soft and cuddly, though also drooly and clawy. We love him.
Repeat after me: Local control. Local control. Local control.
“The Cloud” is just other people’s computers.
Home Assistant, my beloved.
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Happy user of petlibro here and I’m very happy that when I bought it, I went explicitly for the non wifi - non cloud connected version.
These smart gadgets could be good but they are so terrible. I bought a discount smart LED bulb. I was like let’s try it out, it can’t be that bad. Then I realized why was it discounted:
The lightbulb does not work without being connected to the internet, it just flashes in the most annoying way.
Nowhere on its box it was written, hey you have to connect this lightbulb 24/7 to the internet. Just some nice things, like you can dim it and change the colors. Not to mention these shady apps selling your data, asking access for your contacts, pictures and files.
They far overdid the opportunistic predation in many ways.
I can easily imagine a nightmare, where everything people own, get locked down this way. The world is going into that direction.
Thankfully I got one of the older models with zero IoT functionality. Works very well
