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).
Why can’t these schedules be held locally in the device memory.
But then they cant turn off the servers in 18 months, forcing you to buy a new one?!
The answer is lazy design. It was cheaper and easier to make it a dumb device that gets all direction from a server. Less complexity and more control on their end. Also, subscription.
They totally can. We used to have a super low tech one. It was like an old cookie timer. You crank a wheel over to the number of hours you wanted (so it only worked over a day or so)and a spring inside just turned the crank back until a little hole lined up with a notch allowing the door to open. There were two bins inside one device, so two feedings. No batteries. No Internet.
Monthly recurring revenue perhaps? I can’t be bothered to find out of this is a subscription but I bet it is.
There is a subscription service, but it’s not required. I don’t have it, but my pet got fed during the outage so maybe there’s a different line of devices that don’t work without the subscription…