I feel that the most ideal gift that can be given to an engineer of any proficiency level is the ESP8266 NodeMCU development board. Here, I differ from other community members who suggest an Arduino or a Raspberry Pi. The reason is primarily because it is the cheapest and easiest way to connect to the cloud to create an IoT application that can be used to real world problems. Another benefit of this board is that because of the strong community support, one never feels lost while working on an innovative project, like something beyond blinking LEDs. I always have felt an Arduino is good for introducing one to the world of microcontrollers and hardware. However, development of IoT applications from the beginning gives one a whole new perspective to a maker.

I received my first NodeMCU from my elder brother when I entered college. I had used Arduino in high school projects but the projects simply seemed to miss something - the IoT connect. The IoT connect opened up a whole new world to me and in no time I was developing webapps, running RTOSes and what not. In a word, I was able to explore things that the meagre hardware resources of the Arduino did not offer. I was able to participate in online hackathons and win some of them by bringing useful and practical projects to life. The ability to connect to the cloud gave me a God-like feeling which made me feel that I could automate almost anything and everything. After that I have worked with much advanced architectures from Cortex M4s to FPGAs and I must say that I no longer have much need of the NodeMCU. However, the NodeMCU is really special to me as it was the turning point in my Maker journey and since then i haven`t looked back. Therefore, if I were to gift something to a fellow engineer, it would definitely be the NodeMCU development board.

I feel that the most ideal gift that can be given to an engineer of any proficiency level is the ESP8266 NodeMCU development board. Here, I differ from other community members who suggest an Arduino or a Raspberry Pi. The reason is primarily because it is the cheapest and easiest way to connect to the cloud to create an IoT application that can be used to real world problems. Another benefit of this board is that because of the strong community support, one never feels lost while working on an innovative project, like something beyond blinking LEDs. I always have felt an Arduino is good for introducing one to the world of microcontrollers and hardware. However, development of IoT applications from the beginning gives one a whole new perspective to a maker.

I received my first NodeMCU from my elder brother when I entered college. I had used Arduino in high school projects but the projects simply seemed to miss something - the IoT connect. The IoT connect opened up a whole new world to me and in no time I was developing webapps, running RTOSes and what not. In a word, I was able to explore things that the meagre hardware resources of the Arduino did not offer. I was able to participate in online hackathons and win some of them by bringing useful and practical projects to life. The ability to connect to the cloud gave me a God-like feeling which made me feel that I could automate almost anything and everything. After that I have worked with much advanced architectures from Cortex M4s to FPGAs and I must say that I no longer have much need of the NodeMCU. However, the NodeMCU is really special to me as it was the turning point in my Maker journey and since then i haven`t looked back. Therefore, if I were to gift something to a fellow engineer, it would definitely be the NodeMCU development board.