This review is for your furry friend in your Smart Home! Petcube Bites.
What does Petcube Bites do?!
Petcube Bites is a HD 1080P camera with one big difference, it can throw treats!
It also features:
- Two way audio
- Wide-angle view
- Night vision
- 3x digital zoom
- Recording ability and cloud video storage.
It includes a limited free cloud storage of 4 hours, for longer periods you need to subscribe. A feature they call Petcube Care.
One very innovative feature is Facebook live – you can stream your interaction with your pet. This is pretty awesome, especially as at present Facebook gives a notification to all your friends that you are live. Just don’t tell your pet or they won’t want to perform under the pressure!
The app is great fun, the treats are thrown in a similar style to Angry Birds allowing you to choose how far you throw it. It can throw treats to nearly 2 meters!
This is done by dragging up the bone, below, and releasing the white circle.
It also gives you notifications when your pet moves near it, or if you use it it records it as an interaction.
When we spoke to Petcubes they told us new features are always being thought of and can be released via free software updates.
They are well established in the smart pet space with over 100,000 Petcube owners world wide. As well as winning multiple innovation and design awards.
How easy is it to setup?
Setup was easy, you basically plug in the unit and create the account. The box contains everything you could possibly need even raw plugs if you wanted to wall mount it.
When creating your account you create a profile, this includes adding your pets.
We were pretty impressed how extensive the list of breeds was even our Japanese Chin was listed.
One of the biggest challenges for setup was finding the right type of treat.
How much does Petcube Bites cost?
£199 from Amazon.co.uk
Alternatively their website is:
What’s the connectivity?
Petcube Bites connects directly with Facebook – you can even live stream directly from the app.
It also has an Alexa App allowing you to throw treats with your voice!
What’s it like living with it?
We tested it for quite a few weeks with our cat and dog.
The first tricky part was finding treats that worked well in the UK. Due to the mechanism the treats it throws have a maximum and minimum size.
We tried quite a few different treats only to find they jam or come out in bulk. We eventually found something suitable in our local pet shop. Sorry it was unbranded and sold loose otherwise we would tell you what exactly we found worked for other UK readers.
One frustration was the recommended treats were not available in the UK. Likewise the Amazon Dash subscription option in the app was all setup for USA and not UK. As it has only recently been released in the UK we assume this will be updated in a later app update.
If this worked it would be cool as it can automatically re-order treats when low via Amazon!
Petcube Bites Wi-Fi Pet Camera With Treat Dispenser
Once we had the correct treats we needed to find the puurrrrrfect, sorry couldn’t resist, place for the unit. First we tried on a table and then kitchen worktop, finally finding it is best on the floor. This way our pet can see it and understand it a bit better.
Our cat seemed to get the grip much quicker, coming over for treats almost instantly after being called via the 2-way audio.
Our dog took a little training to understand what it was. The first few time we called her she ran to the front door looking for us. To overcome this we trained her by one person being with her when another calls via the app. The person ‘at home’ then showed her where the voice was coming from and reassured her it was ok.
The limited free cloud storage is good however not being able to download videos without a subscription is slightly frustrating. The subscription, Petcube Care, is aligned with the market leader Nests charges.
Petcube Care prices:
- 3 days – $4.99 / month
- 10 days – $9.99 / month
- 30 days – $24.99 / month
Nest charges:
- £8 / month for 10 days
- £24 / month for 30 days
What are our final thoughts?
Petcubes bites is great!
Once your pet gets used to it, it is a fun way of interacting with your pet while you’re at work or just not in. Playing with your pet is not only great fun but stress relief, we found it was great little break from work when feeling stressed and wanted to relax. It is also good for your pet as can help with separation anxiety and boredom. So its win win!
There is a lot they can do to upgrade this product and were pretty excited to see where it goes, for example IFTTT so if it detects motion lights can be turned on.
If you are a smart home and animal lover this is something for you.