Petnet, the smart pet feeder backed by investors including Petco, recently experienced a week-long system outage affecting its second-generation SmartFeeders. While the startup's customer service tweeted over the weekend that its SmartFeeders and app's functionality have been restored, Petnet's lack of responsiveness continues to leave many customers frustrated and confused.
Petnet first announced on Feb. 14 that it was investigating a system outage affecting its second-generation SmartFeeders that made the feeders appear to be offline. The company said in a tweet that the SmartFeeders were still able to dispense on schedule, but several customers replied that their devices had also stopped dispensing food or weren't dispensing it on schedule.
But all is not lost. A system update announcement reports:
System Update: SmartFeeders are returning online. There will be a system reset to help stabilize your SmartFeeder's app functionality. We will promptly update you once this has been completed. Scheduled automatic feeds should still dispense on time.
Those darn customers, so impatient, unwilling to wait for their next fix to download. Please check back in one quarter of a galactic rotation. Thank you.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by edIII on Friday February 28 2020, @09:23PM (1 child)
I totally agree. That's why I said the only reason was monitoring, which is most effectively done these days across a network. That would be kinda cool for somebody I guess, that's paranoid about their pets, but I didn't say it was a necessary requirement for a pet feeder.
Best option is probably just a security camera monitoring it, if you did need monitoring at all.
I would still add some redundancy to the system though. If I'm a few states away, it's rather difficult to get back before the pet starves.
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(Score: 4, Informative) by DannyB on Friday February 28 2020, @09:35PM
Having a security camera, at least one of them, covering the pet feed area should be fairly obvious, if you are depending on an automatic pet feeder.
Another idea, if practical, is to have a friend, who permanently has a key to your house, who you could call if there is a problem. This is the one item that gives me peace of mind.
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