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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 29 2020, @11:53PM (3 children)
Is if you have more than one pet. My uncle used to have two dogs (one died of old age, my uncle will probably get another one) and I have a cousin that has two cats.
If you can figure out a way for the pet feeder to reliably feed each pet the right amount without them fighting over the food and one dominating the other then you can make a lot of money. Until then this is useless for those with more than one pet. It's only useful if you have exactly one pet and many pet owners have more than one pet.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 01 2020, @12:06AM (1 child)
(same poster)
In the meantime sometimes my brother or I get stuck having to feed my uncle's dogs while he is at work if it doesn't conflict with one of our schedules. Or sometimes my uncle will get my other uncle, his brother, to do it. Or sometime he would have to pay someone to do it which would probably be more expensive than getting one of these things. Or else he would have to come home from work early to do it which is generally way more expensive than paying someone to do it. (If his wife is home and not on a business trip she would obviously do it but she is often out of the country).
If the thing generally works but say one day it doesn't function correctly and doesn't feed his dogs it probably won't be a big deal to my uncle as long as there is a way for him to know about it when he gets home. It would just mean the dogs will be fed when he does get home later at night, they'll still be fine.
Uhm ... now that my uncle only has one dog (until his wife gets another one if she hasn't already) I might suggest this device to him.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 01 2020, @06:44PM
(and the problem with trying to pay someone to do it is that the person who my uncle and aunt generally get to do it isn't always available. My uncle doesn't trust just anyone in his house so it's not like he wants to just pay some random person to do it. So sometimes he does have to come home early from work and something like this would save him a ton of money in those situations).
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday March 01 2020, @09:39AM
https://www.tractorsupply.com/tsc/product/pet-lodge-chow-hound-dog-feeder-50-lb-capacity?cm_vc=-10005 [tractorsupply.com]
Fill it with 50 pounds of dog food, and let the dogs sort it out. Come back next week, and do it again. OK, so, next week, you can't empty a whole fifty pound bag in it. Come back in two or three days, and empty the remainder of the bag. Problems solved.
What does this IOT thing offer, that Tractor Supply doesn't?