Anyone have any recommendations for a good automated pet feeder with good HA integrations? Preferably with an RTSP camera.

I suspect I will eventually need to just build my own (since the whole point of the camera is to make you use the app so that you eventually pay for premium), but wouldn’t mind spending 100-200 bucks to get something “now”.

From a quick google, it looks like there is a pretty good HACS for PetSafe. No camera, but so be it. But curious if I am missing something.

  • cosmic_slate@dmv.socialEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    The implication that people are just leaving these running and never checking in on anything is a pretty big accusation.

    I’m not accusing you of neglecting your pets. I don’t know what your use case is. Some pet owners want to use smart pet feeders to monitor their pets eating habits for health reasons, others use them for portion control during the day, and there’s some folks who rely on them for dispensing food while they’re out of the house for a weekend. Depending on the pet, leaving them unattended for a couple days wouldn’t even begin to register as neglect.

    Similarly, it is also a stupid one. Because if the feeder stops working? Then you literally just have a really expensive food dish.

    Well, not necessarily. Depending on the device, it’s now a small and expensive food dish that may remain empty for a period of time. Some pets are trained to eat all of the dispensed food at their meal time, hence why I said if this is to be used for an extended period of time, consider a backup plan.

    There is a way to point out flaws. Something like “Hey, be careful with the rotary kind. If they fail, your pet can’t even force open the latch to get more food”. Which still has implications of neglect, but is a much more polite version than

    There is no implication of neglect even with calling this out. The failure modes of automated feeders are usually not very well documented and the mechanism used to dispense food is usually not even advertised with the feeders. Often the product photos will not show how the hopper mechanism operates either.