Pet Feedster- Automatic Pet Feeder

Before I begin, this device has been functioning wonderfully for my cat for several months. Our cat went from waking us up earlier and earlier every morning to feed to never bothering us about scheduled meals at all. He will still want a snack now and then when we are in the kitchen, which is fine. He's not waking us up. He even seems more secure and less obsessed with what we are eating at dinner time. All in all, a well fed, slim, and happy cat. We've been able to very accurately control his portions and have programmed the device to feed the cat full servings once per day with snacks at six hour intervals. We left the house for five days over the holidays, and the cat didn't starve. A friend stopped by to play with him every night and he was fed and happy each night.

All in all, this product works.

What could be improved:

* the programming interface is oddly placed. i have to get down on the floor to program it.

* the scheduler is, in a word, obtuse. it's the first piece of electronic hardware that really really required the manual to program.

* my cat's paw can very easily fit right up the front chute, and with enough effort, coax a single pellet of kibble to pop out. I never really thought too much about it considering it takes easily a minute for him to treat himself, but then his paw actually broke off a piece of plastic below the auger. the device continued to work for about six months after that part got knocked out, but if my cat can break this thing, it needs to be made of tougher stuff.

* the auger, or "flex feeder" as they call it, is made from the same plastic as the shell of the device. After less than a year of use, it has cracked, will occasionally (once/week?) disengage from the motor effectively disabling the whole unit, and needs replacement. this single part should be made of aluminum or a stronger plastic.

* there is ZERO indication if food was actually delivered or not. with the last two items I listed, I don't feel comfortable leaving the cat alone for more than a day with only the device to feed the cat. a simple sensor in the chute can detect anything passing by, and when tripped, some indicator could verify that food came out! of couse, with my cat's paw reaching up in there, the cat could trip that up to.

As for the replacement part, I have contacted them twice in two months, and after they requested my purchase information stopped returning my emails. from what I know about business, they are probably selling too many units to keep up and think they can afford a few bad customer service stories. I'm publishing mine. They need to either hire full time customer service (perhaps they have), or have a clear way of ordering replacement parts for their customers.

You will pay a premium price for this unit, but you get all the best features in it with less worry than other types.

I am rewriting an earlier review that I had of this, in part due to great service from the company when I had a problem with my unit. They fixed in quickly and with a great deal of grace, so they deserve a better review.

After having used other cat feeders, I purchased this one to avoid some of the other problems I had. Namely, that a smart cat (and I have two) can either learn how to steal from a feeder or how to assault it to the point where it becomes useless. My last feeder required a lot of duct tape and books to weigh it down.

For the most part, this model solves that problem. It is solidly built, looking like a speaker cabinet. It cannot be knocked over (by my cats anyway) and the lid and tank are seriously secured--in another model, the cat knocked over the tank bowl and spilled food.

Whether designed on purpose or not, the back of the unit bows in, so you can park it in front of the plug without the latter being seen. It has battery back up, so if you go out of town and lose your electricity, your cat doesn't starve. The set up instructions are comparable to others, which means not totally intuitive. It will take a few tries to tweak the food supply and not underor overfeed.

This model works better than others and is more reliable. That being said, it does have a couple flaws that should be worked out in subsequent models. For instance,

* The augur is very prickly. If not installed absolutely correctly, it will jam. The jamming is also related to the next issue. There's a slider at the top of the augur that is supposed to be set to the food size you use. It's made of flexible plastic, which contribute to problems (see below) when it bends or gets twisted

* Small animals can filch food. My cats were very quick to figure out that a paw up the chute works very well (which is wider than a cat's paw--why not fix that?). I suspect that my first augur broke from all the theft attempts. The company fixed this with a 90-degree angle spout cover that you can add over the chute. That does make it theft proof, as my kitties found out quickly. So quickly that they quit molesting the unit in their spare time. I recommend that the spout cover be included in all future models. When the company sent me this cover, it bought them a lot of good will.

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I just got this feeder and went through a lot of frustration getting it set up. To me, it made sense to program the unit by battery power before plugging it in and adding water in the base and food in the dispenser. That way, I reasoned, I could lie the unit face up making it easier to see the display for programing. As I eventually discovered, the manufacturer must intend for the settings to be made ONLY with the AC plugged in, which means that you have to either set the unit up high or bend very low to see the display.

When I attempted to program the time setting by battery, it did not behave as described in the directions. Rather than blinking time digits, I got blank dashes which returned back to the zero setting. After multiple tries and plugging in the AC connection, I finally got the blinking digits to enable setting the time. Then I set a sample feeding to test the machine, but then the display light stopped working. I finally solved all of these problems by removing the batteries and entering the settings with only the AC plugged in. Then I re-installed the batteries for back-up.

My other frustration came from the fact that the manufacturer makes no attempt to explain HOW the quantity of food is determined is it by measurement, by number of pieces, etc.????? You must choose a numerical value, but have no idea what that value means. By trial and error, I figured out the setting 06 will dispense about a half cup of my cat's dry food, which is just less than 1/4 inch in diameter, using the absolute smallest setting inside on the dispensing mechanism.

I'm happy so far with the unit's performance, but I really feel that the manufacturer could dramatically improve the set-up instructions by addressing these two issues in the included manual and on the FAQs on their website, particularly given the price of the system.

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The vet recommended an automatic feeder since our tomcat was getting a little demanding for food. He was gaining weight, so we could not have food freely available for him. If we passed his food container without feeding him, he would sometimes try to strike out at us to get our attention and we would end up getting scratched at times.

So the automatic Feedster seemed the right answer. We like the non-jamming system; we like the fact that you can measure and program the kibble output; we like the battery backup; we also like the large food hopper.

We don't like the difficulty of having the programming buttons and display on the front. It would be easier to program if it were on the top of the unit since it sits on the floor. Our cat has found a way to stick his paw up the chute and chase down stray kibble for a snack. We didn't think that stray pieces would stick in the chute with this unit, but the cat has done it several times. We also think the price is very, very expensive! We have used the Feedster for about one month now.

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We've gone through two other cat feeders in the past few years, and so far I'm very optimistic about this one! Only been a couple of weeks, but the timer is much easier than any of the others. Glad that I don't have to buy an AC Adapter separately like some other products, although this does have the ability to run on batteries as well (and I have batteries installed as a back-up). We've had issues in the past because our cat food kibble is small, and it inevitably causes whatever feeding mechanism we had (auger and flip-style units previously) to jam. It is still early days, but so far it is working wonderfully! Will try to update again once we've owned for a year or longer!