Review on HBN Automatic Cat Feeder With HD 1080P Camera,Dog Food Dispenser Work With Alexa And Voice Recorder,Wi-Fi Enabled App Control by Lorenzo Wood

One of the more costly of the auto cat feeders on revain, but comes with a built in camera and wifi, and connects to an app that you download onto your phone.Packaging is enough to ensure it stays in one piece in the box, but if you are like me, you’ll sigh when you see that it’s padded with non-recyclable materials. What’s wrong with cardboard inserts?The product comes with a folded sheet of poorly written instructions and it was pretty much trial and error once the app was downloaded to get the machine connected to wifi. Handy hint: when you see a QR code appear on the app itself during setup, point this at the camera of the front of the dispenser; the machine reads the QR code to complete setup. Setting a schedule for feeding once it’s all ready is fairly straight forward, but the app really could use a rework.This unit is not suitable for anything bigger than cat kibble, so if you want it to feed a dog, you had better have a small breed that eats small kibble. This is where the biggest issue lies: as you can see in the attached photo (I’ve included just the one, as the item description covers all other views) the food is dispensed from the bottom of the reservoir by means of three small plastic ‘blades’ that turn in conjunction with six small compartments below the hole in the bottom of the reservoir, centre left of the image. As a compartment passes under the hole kibble drops into it, but the compartments don’t fill consistently, resulting in some portions being smaller than others. If you are dispensing a few portions at a time for a larger meal, it’ll come close to what you are expecting, but if you only want a single portion, your fur baby may not get a full meal.Slightly bigger than average kibble might also cause the blade to stop turning as a morsel gets trapped between the blade and the edge of the hole. Some dispensers that I have seen have a means of detecting a jam and fixing itself; this machine doesn’t seem to have that ability. More than once it stopped turning.The camera on the unit is good quality and although it might seem a bit over the top, if you have more than one cat and want to be sure they are all eating, you can check to see who is at the feeder at any particular time and manually (remotely) dispense more food as needed. There is also a small compartment on the lid of the reservoir that holds a small desiccant bag to help avoid excess moisture affecting the quality of the stored kibble.The cable that you plug into the mains is a little on the cheap side. It wouldn’t have cost much to upgrade this. There is a battery compartment, though, and this will act as a back up in case the unit is accidentally unplugged (not the hardest thing in the world for a cat to do, as the cable is just a usb with an adapter) or there is a power outage.The biggest issue being the size of the portions dispensed, the rest of my concerns are manageable and overcome with a little patience and perseverance. It’s not a bad machine, but I’d recommend checking out other auto feeders and reading all the reviews before committing to this one.Normally I'd round up a rating if I feel it needs a half star, but in this instance I'm going to round it down.Three stars. Shop around first.