原创 Funny video from Lattice: 'Houston, we have a pickle'

A few months ago lattice produced a really funny video relating to their recently-announced MachX02, which Lattice bill as "The Do-It-All PLD". This was based on a take-off of the "other infomercial guy" – Vince Shlomi (aka "The ShamWow Guy" aka "You're Gonna Love My Nuts").

Now, before I tell you about this new video, I should first point out that I once saw a very interesting article about an educational video in which Professor Vladimir Bulovic from MIT uses a pickle to demonstrate how OLEDS are simply organic substrates sandwiched between electrodes.

Truth to tell, I've always been a bit "fluffy" with respect to my understanding as to exactly what OLEDs are and how they perform their magic. I know how light-emitting diodes (LEDs) work, and I know that OLED stands for "Organic LED", so in the back of my mind I guess I just assumed that "OLED equates to a LED based on some carbon-based organic material," and I left it at that.

Well, in this article, we see a demonstration of how an OLED works using a pickle. On the off-chance that you're interested, it appears to be a miniature kosher dill, which is one of my favorite types of pickle.

But we digress. This latest video offering from Lattice pertains to their Power Manager II chips. The video starts off with an uncomfortable-looking, geeky-engineer-type, who is stumbling and mumbling his words and super-obviously reading from a teleprompter.

Then, suddenly, the ShamWow lookalike guy leaps in and takes over. Next we see a Power Manager II device controlling a bunch of OLED-like Pickles arranged to form a 7-segment display and counting down ... and then we see a Pickle being launched into space (ish) and hear the classic line "Houston, we have a pickle."

I love this sort of thing. It's clever. It's low-budget. It makes you want to do something like this yourself. It it reminds you that Lattice have some very clever programmable mixed-signal power management devices. And, most of all, it keeps me amused, which is – after all – why everyone else is here ... isn't it?