PetSafe Automatic Dog Feeder, 5 Meals, 40 oz Capacity, Plastic, for Dry Food, Multiple Pets

A great auto feeder! This runs forever on the batteries. I change them once a year before we go out of town. I have bought three of these feeders and have never been disappointed. Keep the instruction sheet to help you set the clock and timer.

Ordered November 2016 still serving 2025One of the best purchases ever…just replace the batteries

I have several of these, because multicat household. Only 1 has failed on me before the 12 month warranty and Petsafe replaced it. I have had 2 for more than 10 years and they still work great. I am now finally converting all of the ones I own to AC power after the last few I purchased have gone past their 12 mos warranty and the batteries I purchased at the same time have died after 16 mos. of use.DC to AC How-To-I purchased "2A AC Converter Adapter DC 6V 1.5A Power Supply Charger 5.5 x 2.1mm 1500mA US" for $10.10 and " 6ft. DC Barrel Power 5.5mm x 2.1mm Extension Cable Male to Female" for $2.78 on ebay to give me up to a 10 ft extendable power cord. I cut off the male connector on the extension cord and prepped the cable to expose the positive and negative wires. I purchased a rubber bushing for $.69 3/32" overall length 1/8" I.D. 3/8" major dia. 3/16" min dia. 1/16" Hd. Thickness & a nylon snap bushing that fits 3/8" hole 1/4" I.D. Shorty for $.35. Also, I purchased moldable glue and used one packet at $3.17 for the one packet. Unscrew the battery housing from the main unit, drill a 3/8" hole into the outside of the back side plastic near where the wires from the circuit board go to the batteries. There are two plastic wall from the back side plastic on the battery housing to the place where you want to solder the positive and negative wires from the male side of the extension cable. I drilled a 1/4" hole on the inside wall and fed the power cable through the snap bushing then the rubber bushing and then the plastic on the battery housing and tied a standard knot on the cable to keep it from pulling out of the 1/4" hole. Snap the plastic bushing on the outside hole and the rubber bushing also catches on the plastic bushing when pulled. I soldered the red wire from the cable to where the red wire from the circuit board is soldered to the battery housing and the black wire from the cable to where the black wire from the circuit board is soldered to the battery housing. Then after reconnecting the battery housing, I added moldable glue to fill in the snap bushing from the outside of the case to help keep moisture from getting into the area with the circuit board. You could probably use silicone molding instead of the moldable glue - whatever is handy. Then I connected up the extension cord to the plug on the ac power supply and I went ahead and taped that connection together using gaffers tape to keep the connectors from coming apart accidentally. It works plugged into an AC outlet just as if it was running on the D cell batteries. You can actually still run it off of batteries if you want as long as you unplug it from the ac outlet and don't combine the two. Just don't plug it in and have batteries installed in the feeder at the same time. That would probably fry the circuit board. $17 in parts, a drill, wire strippers, a soldering iron and some silver solder, and about 15-20 minutes of time to put it together are all you need. Cheers and please use this how-to at your own risk!

This is perfect for feeding a diabetic cat who needs several small meals overnight. I love the ability to set 2 programs (daytimes and night times). From recommendation of other diabetic cat owners, I also bought Luminarc Stackable 3 Inch Glass Pinch Bowls which fit inside and simplify cleaning. To PETSAFE! please make the internal bowl available as an accessory so we can either have 1 in use while cleaning the other, or as replacement for damaged bowls. There is a similar competing feeder which has ice blocks to keep the food cold - would be a nice feature to add to this one, but the Petsafe feeder is superior. Occasionally it doesn't rotate fully - I've realized that's either when it's not seated properly, or when the batteries are running down.

I've been using this automatic feeder for my medium sized dog and so far, I love it. Our dog requires medication every 12 hours, so if we know we're going out for dinner in the evening, I can place her pill inside of a treat into the automatic feeder and make sure that she gets her meds on time. I will often include a full 1 cup of dog food with the treat, which is the maximum this feeder can handle per serving. It does take 4 "D" cell batteries, which I haven't purchased in probably 20 years, but hopefully they'll last a long time. So far, it has rotated on time, every time. The programming isn't super intuitive, but assuming you don't need to change the timing often, it is really a "set it and forget it" device.