Enhancing Centralite Elegance

First post after much reading here:
 
About 12 years ago, I purchased a home with a Centralite Elegance system installed. The system has worked relatively well, but now we need to add more “modern” functionality. It seems pretty clear, from reading here, that we could benefit by adding a home automation front end via  a serial port on the inside of the Centralite Master Control Panel. 
 
What I would like to accomplish includes:

1. Ability to program settings/scenes/etc. on a mac or iOS. We had an old windows computer with a serial port for the occasional programming of the system (using Centralite’s decidedly ancient and unpolished configuration tool), but that computer has moved on and I really do not want to have to purchase a replacement for this single purpose.
2. Ability to integrate Nest thermostats and smoke detectors, and the Nest’s built-in motion sensors to trigger Centralite themes.
3. Ability to integrate “smart” devices (i.e.: Phillips Hue lights) and controllers (Amazon Echo, Siri, etc.) with the Centralite lighting system.

I was told by a very helpful tech support gentleman at Centralite to consider the Leviton HAI Omnipro 2.  I would love to get feedback from this community about this system, and others (perhaps more advanced and/or more cost-effective) tools I should also consider. 
 
Thanks.

Welcome to the forum! You can certainly add automation to your Elegance system by connecting it to OmniPro 2. This may also justify your PC replacement as HAI panel is also configured via its own "ancient configuration tool" that only runs on Windows. Unfortunately in the modern world of automation the best hardware does not have the best software. In order to integrate other devices such as nest and echo you'll have to add a software-based controller that could run on a PC (Homeseer, CQS), linux (Homeseer), or HaikuHelper on the Mac OS. There are many others, but these 3 will interface with the HAI panel, and, consequently, with Centralite. 

I think that there is a third party CQC driver directly for the Centralite system as well.

Thanks for the advice. 
 
A couple of follow ups:
 
1) Is there an replacement for the Centralite MCP from other manufacturers that can (easily) be integrated with the rest of the Centralite system.
 
2) The OmniPro 2 has been made for several years, it seems. If I were to purchase a used system that is probably older, will it lack features more recently manufactured units have? Or do firmware upgrades keep it current?

madaroda said:

1) Is there an replacement for the Centralite MCP from other manufacturers that can (easily) be integrated with the rest of the Centralite system.

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What exactly do you mean by that, why would you want to replace the MCP?
 
The HAI Omni Pro 2 panel can be updated by the firmware upgrade, there are other versions like Omni Lumina which only support lighting and Omni LT.

picta said:

What exactly do you mean by that, why would you want to replace the MCP?
 
The HAI Omni Pro 2 panel can be updated by the firmware upgrade, there are other versions like Omni Lumina which only support lighting and Omni LT.

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Have a Lumina here. I'd say it doesn't support security, rather than only supports lighting. As you can do all the other Omni functions... Zwave, Zigbee, lock control, thermostats, etc...

picta said:

What exactly do you mean by that, why would you want to replace the MCP?
 
The HAI Omni Pro 2 panel can be updated by the firmware upgrade, there are other versions like Omni Lumina which only support lighting and Omni LT.

Click to expand...

 
I was considering replacing the MCP because it is very old and several of the 6-pin ports on it no longer communicate with any of the three relay driver boards. But, for now, it is working.
 
I purchased a used HAI Omnipro II with an enclosure on eBay and should get it early next week.
 
I will have to buy a power supply/transformer for it. Any one know of the right one to purchase (specially one that just plugs in and does not require special wiring)?
 
Also, is there any good reason, given what I am trying to do, to purchase an HAI LED keypad?

You need a 44A031 or equivalent 24V, 40VA transformer.
 
You'll need a keypad to do initial setup.

madaroda said:

I was considering replacing the MCP because it is very old and several of the 6-pin ports on it no longer communicate with any of the three relay driver boards. But, for now, it is working.

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In that case you may want to get a new MCP from Centralite

RAL said:

You need a 44A031 or equivalent 24V, 40VA transformer.
 
You'll need a keypad to do initial setup.

Click to expand...

 
Thanks. I ordered a 44A031.
 
Is the keypad I need the Leviton 33A00-1 Omni Console? 

picta said:

In that case you may want to get a new MCP from Centralite

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I may have to at some point. Right now it is working, but with the non-operational ports, I doubt it can be expanded much. 
 
The reason I asked was to see if there's an alternative  that can manage the existing Elegance star system and central wiring, AND provide the enhancements (smart device controls, Nest integration, Alexa commands, etc) that an Omnipro II can offer.  Replacing the Centralite MCP is $1,500 or so, a high enough price to warrant looking for, perhaps, a more modern alternative while keeping the inside-the-wall infrastructure as is. 

madaroda said:

Is the keypad I need the Leviton 33A00-1 Omni Console? 

Click to expand...

 
Yes. That is one of the console models you can use.