I think the greatest gift an aspiring engineer or maker can receive is a toolkit and projects to help them on their way. When I was 12 years old, the first Harry Potter book had just come out and I was already too old to receive a Hogwarts letter. That didn't stop my love of magic though, and I looked for it in reality instead of fantasy; I soon discovered science.

First came liquid nitrogen. It could freeze anything, just like a magic spell! Unfortunately, after borrowing a few college chemistry books to learn how to make it (a time before wikipedia and youtube…), I determined there’s no way I could manage it. That didn’t deter me and a few years later I was dreaming up ways to put the oxygen/acetylene welding striker inside of a wand so it could throw sparks. My older brothers were taking Ag-Mechanics in High School where welding was taught and I thought a spark throwing wand was a much better use of the striker than lighting a torch. Shrinking the striker down into a cylindrical wand shape was still beyond me at that point in time and that idea too, was abandoned. Somewhere out there my Mom probably has my journal with all those early “magic” ideas of mine that never came to fruition.

My first toolkit, with replacement soldering iron. *Yes, that is the original microphone I made (upper left).

Next up was electrical engineering and circuit kits. I was given an electronics toolkit consisting of a soldering iron, DMM, various colored wire, and electronics kits as a gift one year. Finally, here were the tools needed and a project suitable for me to complete. The first kit was a wireless microphone that I was able to use to play my voice over our home stereo system. The sound quality was horrendous and I dropped it after a few words; I was no singer.

However, the spark of magic from when I was 12 had just ignited into a fire of applied magic, or engineering to Muggles; I was hooked on creating! Knowing about and listening to the radio is wildly different from making a circuit that broadcasts your own voice over the air. I had captured the primordial elements of the universe (electrons) and forced them to do my bidding, sending my voice over the vast 4 feet of space separating me from the stereo! Magic was finally at my fingertips!

If you can dream it, you can make it. But to make it, you need the correct tools. Whether that’s a magic wand, a soldering iron and some wire to act as an antennae, or a Raspberry Pi and some motors. A toolkit of your own and a proper project are all that's required to change a dreamer into a maker.

This Raspberry Pi bundle would make a great gift

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.

This is the ideal gift for a beginner and learner, I'm a first year mechatronics student in the Netherlands who work 4 days at a startup and 1 day in school. I had no knowledge of hardware but a bit of software at the start of the school year. My boss wanted me to become a software designer for the company and gave me this kit, I absolutely loved it and I'm still learning new things about hardware and software. This is in my oppinions the ideal gift te give and recieve. I now know some C and C#, I learn Python on the side because I think it's really interesting. I would love to get this kit and use it to impress my boss on how far I've grown in such a small period of time.

I got one of these when I was about 8 or 9 y.o. I t was the Lectron system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raytheon_Lectron but after a month I discovered that for any new project the boxes were too few components, so I started opening then and upgrading and adding new components catch here and there ... Then I never stopped.

Enrico

My go-to gift is a Pi 400 as one of the most versatile tools around the Pi for testing and developing, both software and hardware. As well as when the Pi should used as a small computer board.

A stereo microscope for electronics work is a super useful instrument. They are expensive, but should be high on everyone's list.

I got a microscope for my birthday last year and have loved using it. Looking at PCB’s and being able get up close is amazing and helps not strain my eyes. I’ve wanted get more into soldering for a while and I have a soldering station. But I want a hot air work station to help with BGA and legged devices to make it easier to remove, would love win someone thing that could potentially help me learn more!

This is my Personal Assistant!

Actually it's a bit weird because is in a early stage of development.

It uses a Raspberry Pi 2 with Windows IoT Core.

One of the best gifts of all time was a 1970s Radio Shack Electronics kit !  I had also been gifted an AM/FM/shortwave radio.

I was hooked, got my ham ticket and went off to university for my EE degree.

The one gift that I hope I have given to someone and to give again in the future, is the gift of inspiration. Inspire them to aim high, focus on always learning and doing, dream with an action plan.

There were alot of people that gave me encouragement and inspiration while I was growing up, and it an appreciated & worthy gift.

Some of these people didnt even expend alot of time or energy: an encouraging word, sharing some tidbit of knowledge or experience, or just being positive,

If one kid is inspired by my sharing the fun of building and making, goes off to university, I'll be happy ( no, thats not really true, I want them all to be EEs)

A Raspberry Pi 400 kit (or an Raspberry Pi starter kit or even the MeArm Robot kit) finding its way under my Christmas tree would be awesome for demonstrating RPi for our robot club's online Raspberry Pi Jam in March.

Cool. I had a similar type radio, but it was from a store called Montgomery Wards.