dang I keep making filters for my 1986 HOOVER CV system that wife can't destroy. Simple motor, relay,tin can...keeps working.....

'They' put 'computers' into everything to sell you on 'features' you don't need and say it's 'high tech', so HAS to be better than  previous models, right ?

I can buy an alli-in-one 'computer chip' with WIFI, camera, memory, control stuff ( think guts of a pricey 'trail camera' for $3 includes free shipping to Canada,eh !! And that's BEFORE any kind of quantity discount, which for electronics is usually really,really good.

so really it costs them NOTHING to put the 'fancy krap' in to get you to buy the 'latest and greatest'..

same hold true for cell phones and pickups.....

There's a significant amount of 'over-technologification' that is put into all things consumer.  At one time, the expense of doing this was very high, but nowdays, the cost of microprocessors is dirt cheap, and all the thinking complexity can be done with lines of code, rather than lots of wires and electrical contacts.  Once a controller is designed and tested, manufacturing volume results in a considerably less expensive finished cost.

Of course, they feel that having a maddening array of gadget-features is somehow more desireable than something simple... and the 'insulated' nature of programmers coding Both in they're secluded work conditions AND the 'unsupervised' code product means that (aside from functional testing of the 'documented' features) they're basically uncontrolled in their craft, and thus, able to be entirely unscrupulous in what they've done.

This opens a huge door into bloat and nefarious function.

There will eventually come a time, when the combination of 'KNOWN' bloat features (like active stability control, self-sensing cruise control, 'collision avoidance' and 'hands-free' steering in cars) will result in products that become the key participant in serious accidents that, had those 'features' been not active, the human operator would have been able to prevent, however, the gadgetry being given a higher-priority (by some programmer), placed the user in a circumstance where they could not intervene to STOP such a problem, which will then become a situation where the MANUFACTURER is now at fault in an accident, as the MACHINE took control from, and thus accepted liability for, the result.

Now, your vacuum cleaner won't pose this sort of a situation, but that control board was probably killed by either vibration, static electricity, or having been made of counterfeit (and thus, very misrepresented quality) components... capacitors and semiconductors mostly.  Static electricity ravages vacuum cleaners, especially whole-house, as they have long plastic tubes which air must flow through, and that generates lots of static.