Keep your dogs close but your kitties closer. For whatever reason, pets are important to people. And keeping a close eye on them even when you’re not in the same vicinity has become increasingly possible thanks to the broad proliferation of high tech improvement like Wi-Fi connected cameras. Petcube Bites is one of those cameras, but it’s also a treat dispenser, which lets you fire nibblets for your pets back at home from wherever you may be, provided you have an active internet connection.
Warning: This is a much larger unit than your average Nest or Logitech smart home camera. It’s roughly the size of a big encyclopedia, or a couple of Mac minis standing on their thin edge and stacked. The size is functional, however, since it houses a decent-sized reservoir for your stock of treats, as well as an HD camera, a Wi-Fi radio, and a mechanism for actually firing off those treats, with a user-selectable range of up to 6 feet.
Petcube Bites sells with a selection of all-natural treats included, so you can start using it right away.
Setup of the Pectcube Bites is easy if you’ve ever installed any kind of Wi-Fi camera or connected home device before – and it should pose no problem even if you haven’t. It basically involves getting the unit connected to your Wi-Fi network using an app you download for your Android smartphone or iOS.
Once connected, the Bites will show up in the app, and you can connect to it to view a live feed from the camera, and to do additional stuff including initiating a two-way voice conversation if you feel like ‘talking’ to your pets. You can also trigger the dispensing of a treat, of course, and this is where the Bites departs from a more rudimentary two-way connected home camera.
Using the app, you simply flick up on the smartphone screen to dispense a treat. Again, you can set the distance, and after few seconds the treat will drop into the tray and then get pushed out across the room. You can also adjust portion sizes, and even set a dispensing schedule if you want them released at set times.
There are some nice features the Petcube Bites offers beyond just the pet treat dispensing. It has motion detection, with notifications that push to your device (which you can turn off if you like). Video quality is also not bad at all, compared to comparatively priced dedicated home security cams. If you’ve got a pet and you’re already considering a Wi-Fi camera, this might be a better choice in terms of frugality.
Other advantages nice things about the Petcube Bites include the multiple installation options – you can either use the rubberized base to just sit it on a flat surface, or use the pre-drilled holes on the back to simply slot it over mounting screws in a wall. Again, it’s large, so having options in terms of how to use it is a nice benefit for anyone concerned with how well it will (or won’t) fit into their home decor.
Petcube Bites is available in three color ways for $229.99 right now from Petcube direct. Additional features, including historical cloud video storage, are also available as part of additional paid monthly plans.