My “smart” light switch died

I’ve been into smart technology for a few years, and you probably have too because this shit is forced down your throat on every purchase, which would be fine if the features actually worked and if they didn’t have potatoes for CPUs.

The issue with anything smart is that it’s badly made. The very fragile 3v chip inside all of your smart devices is probably some form of ESP8266/ESP32 or similar. Normally the chip itself is very reliable, but It is very easy to kill them with low quality transformers, converters, or even firmware.

Among others, I have(or had) an Aqara No-Neutral single rocker switch. I’d show you a photo, but it’s incredibly white and would burn your eyes on this background. It’s a light switch, c’mon you know how it looks like.

Normally I’m pretty pissed when stuff breaks like that. Unless you damage something yourself, I see no reason why these devices shouldn’t last for decades, or at the very least one decade. The bulbs that they turn on will last several lifetimes, so why not the switch, right?

Anyway, I wasn’t pissed for this one, the switch died in the “on” position, and it was controlling smart bulbs, so I can still control them just fine, just sucks I can’t use the switch’s button anymore. It kept turning itself off anyway for whatever reason, maybe this way it’ll stay on so my bulbs can always be used.

Imagine that, you can’t use your bulbs because your light switch’s cpu broke, lol

Another thing that makes me not angry is that they were cheap, couldn’t have DIYed one for cheaper if I wanted to.

I think smart light switches are pretty useless. A “dumb” one is what a dollar? Smart bulbs on the other hand are quite cheap e.g from Ikea, and you can control the color temperature as well as get RGB lighting, which can be nice.

The best smart thing to get though is a vacuum. Shut up just get one. Thank me later.

UPDATE:

I did not replace it, I just left it as is and removed it from Home Assistant. It’s still working fine. In fact, I had some issues before with it turning itself off for no reason(probably has to do with why it died), now everything runs perfectly.