1 pound is a bit excessive
I was actually considering setting up a small package, like 50-100g or something strapped to the top of a harddrive. I'd then have a small igniter of powdered magnesium in it, and through the magnesium some nichrome wire. I'd have the nichrome wire hooked up to a ~30v 16850 battery bank via a relay which would be connected to the GPIO ports of an arduino (or stellaris, or whatever else) board. I'd then have a small script that'd cause the arduino to power the relay that I could attach to an email service, finch, ssh, or something else.