There’s no shortage of tech gadgets out there. There’s also no shortage of low quality apps to support these gadgets. One such garbage app is the Bird Lover Feeder app, which tries it’s best to support the Video Bird Feeder by Sharper Image.
Overall the app does what it’s supposed to do. Of course, the camera itself does that fun thing where it struggles with a 5 GHz wireless network. Fortunately, I’ve already solved that piece of the puzzle, thanks to already owning other crappy devices.
Where the app started to give us grief was when we attempted to update the schedule. The plan was to add a schedule, only running the camera from dawn to dusk. Since we don’t have birds frequenting the feeder at all, the only thing we’d ever capture then would be the humans doing things like taking the dog and/or garbage out.
The issues came in the form of an error, “Operation failed” when attempting to save. Frustrating as all get out, because the camera was in fact online and the devices were all connected to the same network.
Tricking the technology
After yelling at the app after a bunch of failed attempts, I started to think through what could be the problem. Clearly the app was struggling to communicate. Could I trick the device into being connected to the app directly?
Turns out you can. The app gives you an “Enter this device” option. Upon clicking that option, you’re greeted with a live feed from the camera. At this point you are very much directly connected.
Once connect, you can quickly tap the vertical ellipses. You can then quickly make the changes you want. If you did things quickly enough, they should save without an error.
Did I mention that you need to move quickly?
While not terribly ideal, it is in fact a solution. I tried it multiple times and was able to get fairly consistent results with this method. Gotta move quick, though 😉
