There’s a ton of great stuff in issue 160, including the incredible motion scanner, inspired by the film Aliens. It’s beautiful, it uses Raspberry Pi technology and makes a satisfying ping sound, and the best thing about it is that it actually works, thanks to a DreamHAT+ radar board. Yes, you too can join the space marines and scan the walls for signs of alien life!

As 2025 draws to a close we’re naturally looking back at what we’ve acheived in the last 12 months. And what a year it’s been! Test your recollection of the key events of 2025 with our Big Quiz of the year – you’ll be amazed at what we’ve managed to pack in to the last 365 days!

There are loads of reasons to try artificial intelligence, but most of the fun you can have is in using models that other people have already made. If you want to go further you’ll want to train your own AI models, and this issue we’re doing just that: teaching a computer to play rock, paper, scissors.

The last words of the German writer, poet and scientific dabbler Johann Wolfgang von Goethe were “More light!”, so we feel like he’d very much enjoy this issue’s tutorial on using NeoPixels as a Christmas decoration. Not only did he propose his own theory of colours – something that our writer Ben Everard goes into in this tutorial – but Goethe was also a big fan of CircuitPython. Or so we’re told.

And that’s not all: we’ve the usual trove of projects, inspiration and tutorials to keep you occupied in the log, cold nights, including simple elecronics with GPIO Zero, making games with Python, and a look at mking your own zine, using free software. There’s tons more in the issue: buy the magazine today, or subscribe to keep learning all year long.