2017 pet IoT in review — the cat side finally gets data, the feeder gets scary
End of 2017, five years of pet IoT documented. Two themes this year: the cat side of the house finally got real data, and the feeder I trusted to keep the animals fed started feeling like something I shouldn't trust.
Scoring the 2016 forecast
| Prediction | Confidence | Outcome | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| The SureFlap connected hub finally ships | 90% | Yes — shipped this spring | ✓ |
| I write up Furbo after living with it | 80% | Did, in May | ✓ |
| Whistle ships a smaller 2nd-gen cellular tracker | 65% | Yes — the half-size "Whistle 3" landed in February | ✓ |
| Petnet has its first multi-day outage | 55% | Two single-day outages, no multi-day yet | ✗ (the trend is there) |
| Litter-Robot launches a Wi-Fi version | 75% | Announced, ships 2018 | ✗ (timing) |
| Mars acquires another pet-tech startup | 65% | No new acquisition this year | ✗ |
| First Apple HomeKit pet product | 25% | Nothing | ✗ |
| A genuinely useful cat-side device appears | 35% | Yes — the Sure Petcare hub is exactly this | ✓ |
Call it 4/8 plus a near-miss on the feeder outage — roughly 60%. Same pattern, three years running: the structural bets land (the hub, the smaller cellular tracker, a real cat-side device) and the calendar bets slip (Litter-Robot's Wi-Fi version, the HomeKit product, the Petnet outage I'm still waiting on). I keep forecasting timing; vendors keep ignoring my calendar.
What got added in 2017
- A Furbo, picked up this spring — the treat-toss earns its keep daily; the bark detection got switched off in week two.
- The Sure Petcare hub this spring — Joule's microchip door is finally networked, and for the first time I have her outdoor patterns as data instead of guesses.
- A dumb backup feeder in June — a plain mechanical-timer auto-feeder with no Wi-Fi and no cloud, installed behind the Petnet feeder as a failover for Joule. Petnet hasn't failed catastrophically yet. The backup is there for the night it does.
What worked
- The cat side stopped being a dead zone. The hub plus the connected door turned "Joule goes out sometimes" into a logged baseline I can actually watch for changes.
- Furbo's treat-toss for rewarding Atom from the office.
- The 2013 Whistle activity monitor plus FitBark on Atom — battery degraded but still chugging, still no subscription.
What didn't
- Furbo's bark detection — a false-positive machine, off after a week.
- Petnet's reliability, creeping the wrong way — two single-day outages and a cloud that feels more fragile each month.
- No HomeKit pet device — third year predicting it, third year wrong.
Forecast for 2018
| # | Prediction | Confidence |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Litter-Robot's Wi-Fi connected version finally ships | 90% |
| 2 | Petnet has its first multi-day outage | 65% |
| 3 | A credible independent tracker — one not owned by a pet-food conglomerate — reaches consumers | 60% |
| 4 | A consumer microchip-activated feeder reaches retail (Sure Petcare or other) | 60% |
| 5 | A mainstream tracker adds health/vitals sensing, not just activity | 45% |
| 6 | First Apple HomeKit-certified pet product | 30% |
| 7 | Mars acquires another pet-tech startup | 70% |
| 8 | A pet-health-data-to-vet integration gets real traction | 35% |
What I'm buying in 2018
- The Litter-Robot connected version when it ships — the first smart-litter device in the house.
- An independent tracker, if a credible non-Mars one finally appears and the reviews hold up.
- A Sure Petcare microchip feeder if it lands, so I can feed Joule per-cat and keep Atom out of it.
- Definitely not another Petnet. The dumb backup stays installed regardless.
What's next
A big hardware year ahead. The connected litter box will be the first of its kind in the house. The open question I keep circling — does anyone finally ship a tracker that isn't owned by the company selling the food? — might get an answer in 2018. And the one I'd rather not have to ask: does Petnet survive another year, or does the backup feeder earn its place?