Hoison SmartFeeder Wi-Fi Programmable Dogs & Cats Feeder With LCD Light Dispenser, Electronic Timer Programmable, Compatible with Android and iOS

This is a pretty good product with a few problems but I will get to those later. First, the camera is very good quality and as long as both your home and mobile device connections are good then you will have very little lag and a very clear picture. The set-up is a little confusing as they need to hire a technical writer to translate the instructions in english with a little more clarity. For a cat the food hopper is very adequate but I imagine that for a larger dog it doesn't take too much to empty it out. If they can make the app a little more intuitive then I think this would be a 4 star product.However... the bad: The tray isn't large so for larger dogs this means probably many feedings in a day just to get the amount of food they need. Also the lights on the unit are very dim which in itself isn't a bad thing but the light is supposed to light up the area so you can see your cat in a darker room and it can't even light the tray in front of this, so be aware that the camera is basically useless at night unless you leave a light on in the room. Another problem is for some reason I thought the camera would let you see your pets eating or maybe even the amount of food in the tray. It doesn't so you have to guess that the food is gone or not. This isn't a huge deal but when you talk to your cat over the speaker or activate a manual feed you see approach then it disappears as it goes to eat. This could have been fixed if the camera was tilted down just slightly. I would rather see my animals up close rather than in the distance. Having some kind of scale, camera angle, or indicator that the tray is empty/full/partially full would be great. Again its not a huge deal but if your animal is an irregular eater then you just have to hope that the tray is empty and its not automatically feeding more and more all over the floor. You could adjust the amount and timing to compensate for how much your animal eats but just a warning for pet owners with irregular eaters this could take a week or more of observation to figure out a good schedule. The machine does give you the weight of the food remaining in the large hopper so you can order and refill accordingly which is a great feature, I just wish they had done the same thing in the tray. The last thing that I feel is a problem is the lid for the hopper on top. It locks in place which is nice and it is spring loaded which is great as well but the hinge is a micro thin piece of plastic that rests against the spring and only allows the door to open 90 degrees. So the refill door is sticking straight up in the air and not laying 180 degrees flat or farther in the back. So when you open the hopper door the door is sticking straight up in the air and you have to refill the top while trying not to bump the hopper door. After looking at the hinge I knew this was going to be a problem because the plastic is so thin all it would take is a bump by a heavy bag or an arm and it would snap the hinge of the hopper door. Sure enough less than a week of having it and my son bumped the door while filling it and it snapped off. The hopper door and hinge should be made of thicker plastic and reenforced because the spring for the door adds extra pressure on the hinge.Overall a pretty good product but this is definitely in the "beta" stage of development.UPDATE October 30, 2016: Also something I have noticed with the unit is that the dispensing of food is highly dependent on the tilt of the tray and that the tray be very smooth and clean to resist the adhesion of kibble to the slant and therefore allow the food to slide all the way down into the main part of the tray. However, over time as the food has been dispensed and dropping into the tray, the rough exterior of the individual kibbles have in essence "sanded" the tray surface down to a rougher and fairly scratched up surface. So... Now what happens is a scheduled feeding is activated and with the "mirror finish" of the tray now rough and uneven the food catches and backs up into the dispenser unit and so now the food is caught up inside the dispenser and the cat is unable to reach some of the food. Over time if not pushed forward into the bottom of the tray the food will just be stuck up inside and the feeding mechanism is not strong enough to continue to dispense and will simply jam. Also another side note is that the storage hopper is not airtight or even protected from constant air exposure which isn't huge but we use cat food that is high in protein and oils and unfortunately by the time the last 1/3 of this food is dispensed its rancid and usually stale. Not a huge issue we just re-fill the unit up to the half full mark instead of filling the whole storage hopper.

Device is completely controlled through phone. Only control on dispenser itself is power button. First you connect the feeder to your phone via the feeder's wifi hotspot. Then you use the phone to connect the feeder to your home network. Once connected, the free phone app (All for Happiness) worked well and the camera video and audio was reliable. Can set up scheduled feedings several times a day with some control of portion size. Can also dispense a small or large portion manually at any time. Portion control is not precise as feeder mechanism is a rotary spreader at the bottom of the bin somewhat like a grass seed spreader. Portion size is just a timer on how long it rotates. When the spreader is not rotating, there is no seal, so food can still settle through its opening if the unit is disturbed. For this reason, it is impossible to refill the feeder without some food spilling out the bottom into the feeding tray or beyond. There is a precise weight sensor under the bin that tells how much undispensed food is left in the feeder. Feeder is quite tall and camera near the top faces straight out, so you cannot see a small pet while it is eating. The top door has a locking tab that should defeat a small cat or dog. However, if a pet is big enough to tip the unit over, they might be able to pop the top open or roll it around to get food out the bottom. Used this to keep a cat fed with family out of town for 3 days and it worked reliably. Could hear cat eating, even when we couldn't see her, so knew it was working. Would rate higher if the camera was pointed down and there was more precision in portion dispensing.

I have had two of these feeders for a few months now. I really like the scheduled feedings. It is very helpful when I can't always get home on time or when I don't want to be woken up at 5am by hungry, howling kitties.The only thing that I wish was different is the tray at the bottom. My cats have recently started putting their paws under the tray and wiggling it up and down until it bumps against something inside the machine and some kibbles roll out. They try to do this all day. Some kibbles will also roll out if they bump into it hard enough. This isn't very helpful when trying to get them to lose some weight. I'm going to try to put a wedge under the tray at the bottom so they can't wiggle it anymore. But it would be pretty nice if the tray could just close within the machine or something so that they can't get to the food at all through physical manipulation.I have also considered mounting these high on the wall somehow so the food drops down to the ground and the cats can't reach the feeders at all.

Definitivamente un producto muy innovador pero con varias límitantes,1. La cámara no tiene visión angular ancha por lo que apenas se ve un pequeño campo visual, esta colocada muy arriba por lo que no sirve para ver perros chicos, tampoco tiene illuminate infrarrojo por lo que en la oscuridad no se ve nada,2. Los materiales son de buena calidad en plástico y el diseño es moderno y limpio,el dispensador de alimento sólo puede ser operado via la aplicación móvil si esta falla, no tiene una interfaz física para programar el aparato, tampoco tiene la opción de programar las cantidades en gramos sólo copas 1, 2 o 3 de 25 grs aprox cada una por lo que no aplica para perros chicos como Chihuahuas que comen 30 grs al dia,3. No tiene protección contra hormigas,finalmente el cable esta muy expuesto por lo que si tu perro le gusta morder todo a su alrededor puede ser de cuidado4. El servicio y soporte con el fabricante es muy bueno por eso le doy 3 estrellas