I've had the non internet connected one for a few years, and overall I like it a lot. There've been a couple of maintenance issues, but all in all I was able to fix them myself with youtube tutorials.

Mine tends to go about a week and a half to 2 weeks between emptying it out, and it does smell a bit by 2 weeks. I've thought about rigging it up to have a larger bin, but then I'd have to carry a larger bag of refuse out.

[–] proudblond 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Ours is connected, and the one reason we like that function is for trips. We hook up a camera to point at it, and then if it seems like it has a fault or something, we can force it to reset or cycle. Worst case scenario is that we turn it off and then on again from the app. So far it’s always managed to fix it, all remotely. We have one very prissy cat (out of three) which is why we got it in the first place, so if we know the person checking in on them won’t be coming soon, it’s nice to know that they won’t arrive to a mess from a pity party.

All that being said, the price is still a gut punch. Even with the privilege to afford it, you’re still spending an obscene amount of money on a computerized shit receptacle.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Does the Internet connected one require an account and specific company app or something? Or is this something I could block from Internet access and connect to Home Assistant so I can deal with it over VPN instead?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

It has an app, but I am fairly sure home assistant can work with it. I connected it to a similar program a couple years ago and had some limited functionality.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Looked at the home assistant docs (not sure why I didn't just do that first lol) and looks like it would be a cloud push integration (requires the external account) :( so continued waiting game for me unless there's a custom firmware someone has out there.