Say you feed your powered mitre saw with wood from the left.

I suggest having a laser measurer mounted to the right. It is angled towards the blade, close to the fence.

When the blad is down 0 distance is measured. As soon as you put wood through it can measure the distance to the end of the wood and hence the resulting length.

A draw back is that it has to be in line with the wood and, possibly, in the way.

If it is set further out, it might be so long away, and with the wrong angle on the display, that it is impossible to see.

So I suggest that it does not have a display but sends its data to a phone close to the saw.

I you have a wood working shop with a bolted down mitre saw, you could mount the laser measurer at a wall once and for all.

It can also be set with a offset.

At Kickstarter, Reekon tools has made a solution that doesn’t have the length limitation my idea has.

Problem:

When using a hand drill it is hard to get it at right angle.

Possible solution(s):

Mount a bull’s eye level on the rear end of a power drill and making vertical holes should be a breeze.  Mount a tubular spirit level on the top side and horizontal holes are equally easy to drill.

One can also use laser lines.  For instance one can have two lines projected from an angle but the lines parallel at the tip of the drill.  If the drill leans in the direction of the laser lines they will come at angle.  Don’t mind my explanation; think about it for a few seconds and you’ll realise how it could be implemented.

There is a neck on hand drills. Mount the holder for the bull’s eye or tubular spirit levels there; then the solution can be used on any drill with neck.

Exchange the power drill for anything that has to be at right angle.  Why not create such a laser device to hold to a piece of wood to make sure it is perpendicular to something else?

Update 2020-07-21

Someone at kickstarter, xdrill, has done even better than my idea. They incorporated the laser measurer in the drill and put a display on and even bluetooth and wifi. Especially the display was clever I think. Nice work!

“Every” drill has a collar to fasten a handle, or let it be installed in a simple drill press construction. Why not have a laser measurer to mount on the collar? Then let it have 3 or 4 lasers to measure the distance and hey presto we know both angle and distance.
Then there could be a small strip of diodes, and possibly sound, to show the accuracy of the drilling. Or have it talk to a phone that is somewhere close by.

To calibrate the collar laser, have a very flat surface with a very 90 degrees hole. Insert a very straight rod of about 10 mm into the chuck and then into the hole.
Or a smart way to mount a square.
Then calibrate the square.

Google glasses springs to mind. A HUD that tells you the drilling angle would be awesome!