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I make music with an Arduino and old floppy drives and I also saw people making music with tesla coils. I've seen tesla coils for sale for about 200$ which seemed good, but there are some doubts:

  1. Will it even pass the customs (in germany) ?
  2. Is it legal to have one at home?
  3. Can you use one without disturbing radio, TVs and telephones within the entire neighbourhood?
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Ad. 3) Put the Tesla coil in a Faraday cage of metal gauze. – jippie Jul 1 '12 at 16:07
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In my experience customs worry more about under what code to categorize a product than what it actually does. So expect questions. Once they know what code to stick on it about everything is fine. – stevenvh Jul 1 '12 at 16:10
The best kit I've seen is this: easternvoltageresearch.com/drsstc_microbrute.html - Could you control this specific tesla coil with a micro controller in order to generate music? – Devils Child Jul 1 '12 at 16:13
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"I'm going to import one thousand Red Alert style Tesla coils ten meters high each and packed into boxes with colorful pictures of their operations. I'm a bit worried about how customs feels about that". Sorry, just couldn't resist. – sharptooth Jul 1 '12 at 16:49
Where is "at home"? Any borders other than German? – tyblu Jul 9 '12 at 17:29

1 Answer

up vote 3 down vote accepted

I Am Not A Lawyer nor Tax Attorney. Definitely not in Germany.

However:

  • Make sure it's marked as an experimental hardware not authorized nor intended for use in domestic environment by unqualified personnel. This way you stay clear from the CE directive which such device will never pass
  • It's definitely legal here in Poland, and in UK, so I'm pretty sure it's legal in Germany as well.
  • If in doubt, have customs classify it as a lab transformer.
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LOL. A lab transformer for lab illumination. – sharptooth Jul 10 '12 at 8:35
Well, it is in principle a HV lab transformer :) – qdot Jul 10 '12 at 12:05

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