The era of open voice assistants

My plea / request : Make a home assistant a DROP IN replacement for a standard light switch. It has power, its adds functionality from the get-go (smart lighting), it’s placed in a convenient position for the room and no extra wires etc required.

Look at Shelly light switches.

You've misunderstood what they're asking for. They're asking for Home Assistant hardware (microphone, speaker, wifi) that, instead of being a standalone box taking up space on the counter/table/etc, fits into the hole in the hall where they currently have a lightswitch.

I guess I did misunderstand, because that request seems strange to me. I’m assuming they have more than one switch. Which one should have Home Assistant on it? Seems like an odd deployment strategy. A pi isn’t that big..

Not the home assistant controller, but a peripheral. A light switch you can toggle manually or through the assistant.

I think the problem with this setup is that it needs to be wifi connected, and if you embed an esp32 inside a wall it will get exactly zero signal. Maybe with external antennas hidden in the switch outer case.