Awe CS, I drooled over owning an HackRF when I was in my RTL-SDR immersion phase. I went as far a carting a kit but didn't have to coin to complete the transaction. I didn't have the patience to buy the gear using "Johnny Cash One Piece at a Time" style.

I read the weekly the RTL_SDR site new letter. Recording and play back of vehicle FOBs still interests me today. Yet manufactures of the keyless entry have done minimal work to secure it. The capturing of the wireless door bell and playing it back made me smile. If car manufactures ignore security what can you expect from other wireless device manufactures?

Yeah I would second HackRF as part of the Raspberry Pi bundle.

I own a HackRF One, I can confirm it is a really nice piece of kit. Since it's an open source design you can get clones of it from other websites now.

My go-to gift for other Engineers or Makers would be a minized development board. It is a nice board for developers starting with fpga's and handy for prototyping.

Stay safe and best wishes for 2021, Stefan Beelen

During my engineering study I got really interested in drones but I didn't have money to buy it. During a casual talk with my sister I mentioned about this. Seeing my enthusiasm she bought me this type drone as a gift for my birthday. And I was really surprised and very excited and happy. It was a cheap but I got my first drone driving lessons on this. Then after a year I disassembled it and start learning its circuit so that I could build my own drones. That part is still going on. I am trying to build a custom drone now....

The Goto Gift for me is Raspberry pi with at least 2 gb ram along with the necessary items of kit like powersupply, jumper wires and breadboard and a getting started guide of raspbeery pi. My friend "Love" has given me a raspberry pi 3 Model B as a gift. I am using this to run docker containers in Raspbeery pi. I have tried BalenaOS https://www.balena.io/os/  and currently trying balena sound project https://sound.balenalabs.io/  at my home. My next project is to run kubernetes cluster with Raspbeery pi.

I built and ran a fully inclusive STEM program at a title one school locally for 6 years.  My students lived in homeless shelters, DV shelters, and were from refugee groups that were brought to our state.  None of them had any money so I wrote grants so the parents would not have any out of pocket costs. My students excelled to the point that they were profiled a few times on the local news.  But this one student....she walked through hell and was broken.  In a DV shelter, things her dad did are unthinkable, and then her special needs brother passed.  She was broken when her mother approached me to enter her into my program.  This young lady would not speak, would not look at anyone, was scared and shattered.  She was with my program for 4 years and watching her bloom was awe inspiring.  Her 4th year she designed and 3d printed a rocket car that unofficially(couldn't get Guinness out  in the time frame we had) broke the world record.  Her car broke 212mph.  She was invited to an engineering contest because of the news story on the cars.  She was in tears, she did not have the money or equipment for what she wanted to do.  I was able to provide her with a Raspberry 3b and a full robotics kit.  She spent 6 months on her project (she did it all herself and even turned down my help because she wanted to prove she could) and landed a 2  year scholarship out of it.  This was a young lady that went from a broken little girl with no belief in herself to being the first in her family with the option of college.  I honestly can't think of a single gift that I have ever given to have such an impact as that damn little Raspberry pi and robotics kit.

Chocolate, because you know.... It's chocolate!

My go to gift would be Rasberry Pi's - otherwise teensy's and breadboards are always useful, especially for beginners like myself.

well i didn't received any gift this Christmas due to Covid19 crisis..

my go-to Gift would be Raspberry pi 8GB model cuz i think its future proof 8GB ram is Sufficient for heavy loads and tasks and Ofcourse some Knowledgeable Books and ♡1 year unlimited 4G internet pack♡  since not everyone can afford High speed WiFi and Unlimited 4G net even i Personally can't afford High speed  wifi and my 4G net is way faster then Slow speed Expensive WiFi and i can use internet everywhere thx to 4G

my 1st Tool was lots of Calipers and Taparia Tools box taparia i repaired Water heater BPL CRT T.V and I did my All Home Electrical Wiring with that tool box

edit:- i think im 30 mints late  

I think I got old in last a few years - giving presents became much more funny than receiving them...

Some time ago, due to political fluctuations, one of Polish Radio stations was almost closed - fiery conflict in the station made a lot of people leave. Unfortunately, this was my grandmother's favorite radio station, which she listens whole days. Many people from the station organized themselves to create a new, internet radio. My grandma is a totally analog person - she doesn't use a computer, she uses her phone only for calling, she doesn't even send SMS. For her birthday I got an idea to build an internet radio receiver, tuned to receive this particular station, as easy to use as possible - click to power on, click to power off.

Maybe this isn't a very complicated project - RPi 3a+, a few lines of code, a power/sleep button, USB-powered speakers... But the happiness of my grandma is priceless - for the last 6 months every time I visit her the radio is playing and every time we speak she tells me how awesome the radio is and how she is glad she can listen to her favorite radio redactors!