C7 capacitor issue on these many fail all the time. I lost 5 out of 7

[VictorT]

I lost most of my switches due to C7 capacitor issue. I replaced a few of the capacitors, and a few did come back, but majority would not. No reason for the failure, they start blinking on and off. The ones that survived past a few months are still ok but it's hit or miss. My LED dimmer switches are all still fine so it seems these are the only ones with the bad circuitry. Need a redesign as the failure seems to happen after a power down and back up while wiring or during a power outage. I also lost many GE wall plugs with a similar issue, was only able to fix 1 out of 4 maybe the same manufacturer. I'd love to see if the current switches are any better.

[randy]

The problem is likely a bad run of electrolytic or underrated for temperature. I was in the consumer electronics repair business for 40+ years. Electrolytic failures became a lot more frequent about the millennium. They failed before that, but the quantity seemed to explode in the 2000s. This began when a lot of manufacturers were looking for a more environmentally friendly electrolyte. We saw it in camcorders to plasma TVs. Most of these were bad batches as well. We’d see an entire model run of Sony and JVC camcorders. Plasma displays generate a lot of heat. The other problem is using 85C rated instead of 105C rated capacitors. The 85C devices seem to dry out prematurely. We saw very few 105C devices fail. We had a number of campaigns to replace 85C capacitors in entire runs of plasma displays from almost every manufacturer. It can get fairly warm inside of a wall box.

I think GE, Jasco, Dragon Tech and HS devices are all sourced from the same manufacturer.