Play the Imperial March on a Modified Arc Lighter

If arc lighters weren’t cool enough, now you can build one that plays the “Imperial March” from Star Wars, as seen below. Hacker Ahmad Tabbouch (aka PodeCoet) figured out how to do this after seeing and eventually purchasing unmodified arc lighters from AliExpress.

Once he got his hands on the lighters, he took one apart, finding an unidentified microcontroller inside. He then replaced with a PIC12F1840 chip that could be programmed to modulate the arc waveforms. So instead of a boring (still awesome) pulse that causes fire, he now has one that modulates this signal in the correct frequency to produce sounds.

If this project couldn’t be any better, he actually programmed one to give to a friend that would play a song from the show Lazy Town on the 20th power cycle, but never again. Tabbouch’s hope is that it will cause him to question his sanity! You can see instructions for how to do this on his Ultrakeet website.

[h/t CNET]