XD, I totally did this to make a smart alarm clock a couple years ago. That said it is completely stable, don’t think it has ever crashed or locked up on me, unlike the echo show it replaced that did so frequently (not to mention it occasionally updating in the middle of the night and waking me up at full brightness)

Lights are one of the areas where I think automation is genuinely useful, but my rule with anything “Smart” is that it has to be able to run 100% locally.

I had to call into my bank recently and had to listen through what was effectively an ad to sign up for their voice authentication service. All the while I’m thinking, “How dare you implement this crap when you don’t even support TOTP or security keys.”

It is about managing risk, you do need real world testing for many products, and it is impossible to do that without risking the public sees it (you could camouflage it like they do with cars) , but at the same time it probably isn’t suitable to take an unreleased phone into a bar where the risk of losing it is higher than say a grocery store.