Cats and dogs miss meals after popular Petlibro smart feeders go down
Petlibro users report outages affecting smart pet feeders and other devices, leaving pets hungry while the company works on a fix.
Stock photo for illustration only, not from the actual event
- Petlibro smart pet feeders suffered a service outage starting on Tuesday
- Users on Reddit reported offline feeders, litter boxes, and water fountains
- Petlibro stated they are actively restoring service and app functionality
Pet owners faced a stressful situation as popular smart pet feeder brand Petlibro experienced a system outage, causing devices to skip scheduled tasks like dispensing food. The disruption began on Tuesday, with numerous users taking to Reddit to report that their smart pet gadgets, including food dispensers, litter boxes, and water fountains, had suddenly gone offline.
Although Petlibro maintains that existing settings and schedules stored locally on the device should continue to operate as programmed, many users found this wasn't the case. Specifically, users reported that Petlibro's RFID and Granary food dispensers failed to dispense meals on schedule—a major hurdle for owners away from home. Additional issues were reported with Dockstream smart fountains, Luma litter boxes, and the mobile application itself.
Stock photo for illustration only, not from the actual event
"We are currently experiencing a service issue affecting some Petlibro app functions. Our team is actively restoring service, validating stability, and bringing functionality back in stages."
Petlibro
Addressing the issue on Tuesday, Petlibro announced they were experiencing a service disruption impacting certain app features, assuring customers that their team was actively working to restore service, validate stability, and bring functionality back in stages. In a subsequent update on Wednesday at 2:30PM ET, the company stated that much of its service had been restored as operations returned to normal.
This incident highlights the inherent vulnerabilities of IoT ecosystems and smart home devices that rely heavily on cloud infrastructure. When backend servers fail, local schedules can sometimes desynchronize or fail to execute properly, demonstrating why offline redundancy remains a critical challenge for connected hardware companies, especially when livestock or household pets are depending on automated routines.
While some customers noted that their devices had resumed normal operations, others continued to struggle with reconnecting their hardware to the Petlibro app. The Verge reached out to Petlibro for further comment regarding the incident but did not immediately receive a response.
Source: The Verge
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