A stupid Internet of Things story

Recently my Nest thermostat started getting aggressive about going into Eco or Away mode to save energy. Normally, it's probably fine but our winter has been a bit chilly this year and I've started to notice.

I'll be working in my home office for a couple hours and suddenly it's freezing. I'll check the Nest and it'll have dropped to 65ºF in Eco mode and will take two hours to get up to 70ºF in the winter. If I don't get up and visit my kitchen every hour or so, my Nest thinks I'm out of the house.

I realize if the Nest worked with Apple's Homekit, I could probably figure out a way to use my phone's location inside the house to denote my presence and keep the heat running normally when I work at home. But Nest is owned by Google, and they're in an eternal battle with Apple, so that's not going to happen.

I relayed this nonsense to a friend who came up with a remedy immediately: if I owned a Nest camera, and I put it in my office, it would know I was around and keep the heat on.

He was right of course, but I had to picture it to grasp it fully. In order to keep my house warm when I'm working at home away from my smart thermostat I'd need to buy a $400 camera and point it at myself in my home office so that my thermostat knew I was on the other side of the house.

This is the current state of IoT devices and ecosystems.