Fibaro news.

http://zwaveforum.se/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=4876

Fibaro seems to be going all in with voice control for your home automation project. The discussion board zwaverforum has something that looks like press material from Fibaro promising several new devices. What strikes me is that it seems like most of them support voice control. And could connect to your wired burglar alarm also. Another nice device is the Player, that I hope will work in same way as Sonos different multi room audio system Play, but connected directly to your home automation z-wave network, though Sonos is supported with Vera with the app in the app-store.

Some of the new devices seems to be able to work stand-alone without any of the Fibaro controllers.

The Stack a box controller

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1561203377/the-stack-box-a-smart-home-controller?ref=category_popular

This controller stacks a home automation controller with multiple radios including e.g. Bluetooth 4 into a box that also will double as a storage area unit (a.k.a. SAN). If the kick starter project will fly will soon have yet another HA controller to compete with the billions of homes out there!

Z-wave on Clas Ohlson

If you happen to visit the north and cold part of United Arab Emirates Europe you might have noticed a store that exists in every larger shopping centre called Clas Ohlsson, Clas Olsson, Klas Olssen, Clas Ohlson. Now they will shelf not only the controller zipato box but also plug in modules (39,95€), pucks (49,95€), remote control (69,95€), IR-transmitter (79,95€) and almost any thing you can imagine needed for your z-wave project. (No locks could be seen so far). The stuff has not reached their webbsite yet but is available in their paper catalouge.
This really makes the HA equipment available to a wide audience in north Europe. 

getpiper the new Z-wave controller

http://getpiper.com/ is now available. It's a z-wave controller, camera, two-way audio, siren and environment controller in one device! Price is tempting and the look is very nice.

Fibaro lite vs Vera3

Fibaro has decided to go (almost) heads on with MiCasa now offering a step in home automation model called Fibaro Lite. 
The diffrence in euro is 279,98€ for Fibaro vs 238,00€ for Vera3. Though I have not tested the Fibaro Home Centre Light I noticed in the small print that it does not support "scripting language for advanced scene control" like it's bigger and more expensive version. I'm not sure how big diffrence this is in real life... Leave a comment!

Older Ubuntu upgrade fails with 404

Man was I stuck! My Raspberry Pi has been running nicely in a corner doing things what RPi's does best, like measuring temperature, taking pictures, shining the leds etc. I thought I should give it the traditional treatment "sudo apt-get update". But no, and no. It just answered with error 404.
So after sometime I understand that the friends at ubuntu is doing something to me pretty strange. Ubuntu move their files around, in some kind of house keeping attempt, on their servers so nobody should be able to simply any longer update their machines, since they belive they are too old, one day.
Even microsofts older un-supported OS's can often be upgraded with out poking in the registry.
Well, as always very little is impossible and all you have to do is edit your source list and good instructions are available on Ubuntus pages:
http://askubuntu.com/questions/91815/how-to-install-software-or-upgrade-from-old-unsupported-release

Latest M2M hardware

Some things has happened since first release of the Raspberry Pi board and I think the original RaspPi still is one of the most versatile, available, devices for decent bucks right now.
What you might like to check out is also the newly releases Raspberry Pi Model B+ that hosts 4 USB ports.
Something else that might attract to some of you is the more boosted up Raspberry spin of: Banana Pi  where you get 1GB of RAM.

Last but not least is the Intel Edison that is now (almost) the SD card size but intel chip with integrated bluetooth 4.0 and Wifi.

The fact that also finally after years of waiting the latest iPhone 6 now also includes Bluetooth 4 AND NFC could make up for some nice implementations to control your home devices.