eTape16

Photograph and video by the author

The eTape16 has four buttons for its various display options and two buttons for recording measurements.

That shopworn adage “Measure twice, cut once” has sown in me the seeds of doubt, and I frequently back away from my bandsaw, tablesaw, or chopsaw to remeasure. The habit can save me from wasting expensive materials, but it eats up time and verges on an OCD behavior. My potential for error with a tape measure is in reading the hashmarks incorrectly and mistakenly recording or remembering the numbers.The eTape16 takes my fallibility out of the process. It is a 16′ tape measure with an onboard computer and a digital readout. The 3/4″-wide tape has the usual markings in inches and centimeters, but between them there’s a row of what looks like a Morse-code message in rectangular dots and dashes. I’m guessing the markings pass by some optical scanner inside the polycarbonate case and translate them into the numbers in an LCD display powered by a 3-volt CR2032 button battery.