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).
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.