PETLIBROReplacement Wireless Pump for Cat Water Fountain PLWF005/PLWF115/PLWF105, Cleaning, Super Quiet Pump for Pet Water Fountain Dog Dispenser

I didn't trust this being able to detect the small amounts of water that my cat normally drinks, so I set up a camera permanently recording and compare that with vacations from the app. It actually does work really well. I didn't confirm the amount of water reported is correct but I did confirm that each notification corresponds to the cat visiting the water fountain.It took quite a bit for my cat to get used to it, he was fairly afraid of it. Would have been convenient if this would have included a startup guide.I set it up with an intermittent schedule of running for just one minute and then waiting 30 minutes without running, that minimize the noise as it makes and in that mode I got my cat used to it.There's no way I'm going to be buying you filters every 2 weeks, but at least this has running water which is better than my previous solution which had just water and in a bowl

We have five of these brand, four in place around our house and a fifth to wash and clean for rotation. Even our most picky cat loves these. We have a couple of the battery versions and this one on permanent power. (one of our cats needs it running or he doesn't commit until it times out) Much prefer the notifications from this version - lets us know at a glance when a cat drank, when it needs refilling etc. Get plenty of filters and replace them no less frequently than 10-14 days and you will avoid bacteria etc. We use cat water as well.

I was skeptical at first but me and my cats love their fountain! My suggestions are:1. Use filtered water only (also when soaking/rinsing new filters before use)2. Clean/rinse top lid of fountain each day due to pet hair, dust, bugs, etc. (this also provides daily inspection of filter and remaining water in fountain)3. Clean entire system weekly (I put mine in the dishwasher which saves a lot of time and disinfects every nook and cranny)4. Completely take apart every part of the system before cleaning (see pic)5. Replace filters as often as needed6. Always have an alternate water bowl available in case the power goes out and you don’t have a generator4. Replace water as needed and not just when you clean itWe loved it so much, we also bought the pet feeder which has also been wonderful! Especially the camera and microphone for when we’re away!

Update 2:Petlibro has fixed several more things and actually offered me a refund for all of the trouble I’ve had. (I bought this basically the day it was released and there were lots of problems - see below.)The first thing you should know is this company has stood by their product. When I report feedback in the app, a real person responds via email and offers real assistance. In many cases they have responded with thoughtful feedback and fixes to the problems I reported.So far all of my problems have been with the app, so fixes haven’t involved the hardware itself.As of now, the app has improved tremendously. Almost all of the features work as expected. The only app bug I have now is that when you are using ounces, the little progress icons that show daily goal completion for the past 7 days are always complete whether the goal was met or not. It works properly if you use milliliters.The remaining moderate to major issue is the accuracy of the volume consumed. (More on that below.)The app, in general, is simple and clean, but offers a lot of information about the status of the device and about your kitty’s visits to get a drink.Some of the notifications are a bit much (pet hasn’t had a drink in 4 hours which is considered “abnormal” - whatever) but the notifications can be individually enabled or disabled, and notifications can be silenced based on time of day.The app will prompt to make sure things are okay if you remove the bowl for cleaning and even offer to reset the cleaning reminder if that’s why you removed it.It will also notify you if it detects that you added water.Of course you get notifications for kitty drink visits if you want those.Reminders about cleaning the fountain and changing the filter are configurable and can be set to a duration that makes sense for your situation.The operating mode of the fountain can be set to continuous or cycling on/off for a configurable time.The only real complaint keeping me from giving 5 stars at this point is that the accuracy of the water consumed is somewhat poor. The fountain is very good at detecting small visits for example even just a tenth of an ounce. I have not caught it reporting false positives nor have I seen it miss an actual drinking session. It's clearly ignoring the slow evaporation of water over time as it should.But: I’ve tested the accuracy a number of times by carefully scooping 1/4 teaspoons of water from the flowing stream into a small bowl on a very accurate digital scale using volumes as small as 20ml to as much as 150ml. In every case the fountain is off by between 12 and 20 percent on the low side - meaning it is consistently under-reporting the amount consumed by a fair amount. (As an aside I am pretty sure my cat thinks I’m crazy for doing this. He is very curious about anything I do with the fountain and sits there “chatting” with me when I take measurements.)I have been very careful to follow the instructions with calibration, and I have even factory reset the fountain to make sure the results are the same. At this point the accuracy seems “fair” - it’s not generating crazy numbers that bear no resemblance to reality - but it’s definitely not precise.If you can live with this (I can) then I definitely recommend this fountain. I am hopeful this is something they will be able to address with a firmware or app update in the future.The Wifi setup was painless and the connection for me has been pretty good. Like almost all IoT devices it is 2.4 ghz only.It requires internet access and a cloud account to work with the app.The Wifi scale base is running on an espressif IoT chipset (you can determine this by the MAC address when it connects to WiFi) which is a powerful and widely used home automation platform for devices like this. It’s possible the fountain will be able to have custom firmware loaded onto it in the future if hobbyists in the IoT community take an interest. That could lead to the ability to run the device without the Petlibro cloud account someday. Because it is a fairly capable network device, I keep it isolated to “internet only” access on my network to be safe.As for the fountain itself, it’s identical to the other Petlibro fountains in this family, and you can read great reviews of the hardware elsewhere. For me, it’s a pretty good fountain. The only nit is that there are some tiny spots inside the pump mechanism that are a bit hard to clean.Update:Petlibro has fixed a few things with the app, and they are responsive to issues, but not enough has been fixed for me to add a star.Here is what has been fixed in the app:-Added ability to see measurements in ounces.-Resolved the "hang" issue that caused the need to force quit the app.-Resolved duplicate entries in the log that caused measures to be *way* off.Here are the current noticeable problems with the app:-The goal history indicator is broken - it always shows 100% achievement for the last week regardless of actual water consumption.-They added a "feature" that notifies you if a pet has not had a drink in 4 hours. Nobody needs this alert - and there is no way to turn it off without also turning off the "pet came for a drink" alerts.-There is no way to clear alert messages without opening them one at a time in the app.-The water level indicator is meaningless and also incorrect. If you fill to the fill line, it does not show full. Also, since this is supposed to be able to measure a few milliliters of water being consumed, is it too much trouble to actually show the remaining water volume? That would be very useful for letting users know how much water to add to top it off. Right now you have to either guess, or open the top and see for yourself.After a bit more time with the fountain, I do think there are a couple things about it that are not as good as the Petkit fountains. Specifically: The filter is less than half the size of the PetKit filter, and whether it's the smaller filter or the larger water tray, or the plastic tank, this fountain needs cleaning more frequently than the PetKit stainless fountains. Also, the intermittent mode of the fountain should be more configurable. Right now you can only pick 5 minute increments for run time or off time. Let us pick 1-minute intervals. If my cat stares at the fountain while it's off, and has to wait 5 minutes before it starts, he's unlikely to get a drink. If it could be set to run for a minute then rest for a minute, that would make it much more likely for him to see it while it's running. Instead, I have to run it continuously which is more wear on the motor and more energy.Original Review:I decided to move from a Petkit wireless fountain (which is fantastic) for the consumption monitoring.The design of the fountain is well refined, better than Petkit in some ways. The (silent) cascading fountain and very visible ripples on the stainless tray are pretty irresistible for my cat. I’ve seen him drinking from it more often so far on the first day than he normally does from the Petkit.The way this is supposed to work is that the base is actually a scale, which measures changes to the weight of the fountain. Water is a known weight per unit, so the scale detects when water is added or removed, giving a measure of how much your kitty has lapped up, as well as how full the fountain is.Theoretically it also knows to ignore very slow changes like evaporation, and only registers changes large enough to be caused by kitty drinking.This is all great in theory, but so far the app is such a basket case it’s impossible to know whether it’s accurately measuring anything.For example, the app frequently just goes into an infinite “working” state when trying to navigate the pages.Also, the app shows the tank is only about 80% full even though it was filled precisely to the “fill” line. (Even after calibration.)The app is also missing a number of features. It only measures in ml - so in the US you’ll have to convert from ounces. There is no maintenance or cleaning mode, so when you want to clean the fountain, the app will send you error notifications and you’ll have them in your log forever. There is no way to choose which notifications you want - so if you want low water and offline notifications, you’ll also get an alert every time kitty takes a drink. They are all on or all off.I get that the product is less than a month old, but at this point it’s no better than a regular wireless fountain due to the app issues.Hopefully Petlibro will address these problems quickly. If not, I’ll send this back and wait for one that actually works from Petkit. I’m sure they are working on one.

I never liked always refilling my cat's water every morning for obvious reasons. You can't do it unless you're there, and there's still a slim chance you may forget every once in a while. I wanted assurythat my cat would have a good amount of water, so I got one of those water dishes that has a big refillable water jug. That worked, but the cat didn't appear to enjoy it as much (water obviously loses a lot of freshness). This item is great for my cat because it cleans and filters the water and is constantly cycling the water that goes in. When the water gets low, you're always given useful reminders to refill it. The only complaint is that it's a bit of work to properly clean and change the filter every two weeks as us suggested. Not a big issue.. main recommendation is that the cat loves it way more than any previous water dish.