Crown Majestic Diamond Series V3-N (Battery use Independent of Adapter)

Rough start with this feeder back in March (editing 8/4/16) when I found out that this one is either AC power OR batteries, the batters are NOT a backup, you need the V3 (no N) if you need the battery backup one. I was leaving for a business trip and was rather flustered. But their customer service contacted me IMMEDIATELYI ended up using the batteries since I did not trust it to reset with a power outage and fail to resume dispensing properly. I do not believe it would resume... SO. We use batteries and it went a little over 4 months on the regular alkaline Duracell AA's. BUT the low bettery indicater did not show itself, the program and screen are on, but it's too weak to dispense the food. SO, replacing batteries. I will say that I have grown to trust this, and usually I work from home... and I have set kitchen timers to go off 2-3 minutes before the feeder should feed, and it works properly every time until the batteries got low. Let's hope it slides right back into service....Follows are the original follow up tips after my my original post, still important to note.After a couple days use.He did explain HOW CRITICAL setting the kibble size it to it's proper function. Pay specific attention to the instruction in this area.______________UPDATE 2 ____________________it has worked like clockwork for over 24 hours now, but I do have to adjust the kibble size thing again cuz it's feeding WAY too much each time and I have reduced the 3 services down to 1 already, I want a quarter cup per cat every feeding... for a good daily total. They aren't even eating it all now, which is maybe good, that it give too much. One tends to be a pig, I can't believe he is leaving any in the 'bowl'. but this is a good experiment prior to leaving and relying on it.

This product has pros and cons. It seems to work fine but it has a "cheap" feel to it. For as much as this thing costs I expected something that is a little higher quality. Its not terrible quality dont get me wrong but its just not what I expected. the buttons and especially the mic/speakers for the record option are very cheap. The audio on it is abysmal. Your cat might hear it if he/she is within 10 feet of it and it sounds like you were recording it in a tunnel. Heres my BIGGEST beef with the unit though...Its not configurable enough for me. Basically you cant set it to dispense 1 1/4 cup of food and have it feed the cat 3 or 4 times a day. I mean 1/4 cup increments is OK I believe but why cant it be set to feed your cat 5 or 6 times a day? Then I could get that 1 1/4 cup that Im looking for. As it is now I have to set it to 1 1/2 cups and then periodically put the extra back in the hopper so the cat cant free feed. he acts hungry a lot and hes already a wee bit on the thin side if I only give him 1 cup per day. Its not a deal breaker but it just seems like the added flexibility in feeding wouldnt have been hard to just implement in the first place.

This is a good product, and there are plenty of options. It can be programmed for 1-4 meals a day, and the amount of food dispensed also has four different settings. My only complaint is that I can't program specific times. The number of meals per day dictates how often it releases food and what time the first meal will be released. So, setting it to 2 meals will cause it to spit out every 12 hours, and setting to 3 would be every 8 hours, and so forth. But, my schedule shifts, which means sometimes I don't need it to spit food out, while other times I might. Why not just make an adjustment as needed, you say? Well, the book says to power it off and then on before changing the scheduling on it. This means resetting the clock every time, and every button you hit generates a loud beep. It's pretty obnoxious, so maybe I should just be complaining about the beep.Anyway, overall, this is a great product. I'm able to leave my cats for a few days at a time without worrying about food and water for them. Now I just need a good automatic litter box!

This cat feeder has gotten us through multiple vacations, weekends away, and times when we're at work and Phoebe is hungry in the 6ish months that we have owned it. We have a super hungry cat who cannot self-feed and two hungry dogs who love her food, so the 4 meals a day option is great. We have a big cat, so four 1/4 cup meals a day works well for her, but since this is the smallest meal size 4 meals a day may not work for little kitties. Our 20 pounder loves hearing the food drop down and will run full speed to the feeder. She is a lot happier with the four meals then when we had been feeding her twice a day by hand. The only thing I don't like is that the bowl is so large, and makes the feeder take up a lot of space. We moved it behind our couch, but it takes up quite a bit of floor space for a food bowl.

Great Product. I purchased two of them. These are perfect for my obsessed cats who required to be fed only small portion. My cats have been bothering me for many years for food. Now they are praying in front of the machine to drop more food when they are hungry. No more slapping on my face whenever my cats get hungry. HURRAY!!Oh. One thing to be aware for the two or more of this item buyers for multiple cats like I have.One of the machine clock goes a little bit faster than the other machine, so these are frequently needed to be adjust for the same time setting.If you ignore the couple of the second different, the time gaps gets bigger every second that ends up couple of MINUET difference.Yes. that was my experience. So my dominance cat eats most of the food while my second cat gets starved to dead. Well. Now I adjust the time one a month.