Best Way to Expand HAI Omni II

I have the original Omni II, not the IIe. I have two expanders pretty much maxed out. The built in serial port will be permanantly connected to a PC for PCAccess. I know I can add one more serial port via an expander. There are still a number of things I want to do including sprinkler management, driveway detection, video, etc. I was thinking about adding an Ocelot to the mix. I am currently using X-10 and might consider upgrading to UPB at a later date.

What is the best way to expand the original Omni II?
 
Seems like any strategy needs serial ports. Just curious, if you were thinking of going to a IIe why not go all the way to the Pro? A few hundred bucks more but maybe cheap insurance against future expansion requirements?
 
The serial port on the Omni's is just woefully low speed for the amount of data that is involved. Moving up to one of the ethernet based ones really makes a lot of difference. It then becomes snappy and fast.
 
Even if you do upgrade your panel you will still need an Ocelot if you want to do any IR.

We'll see... We're doing some testing now with Global Cache. I'll let you know what Jim comes up with.
 
If you are combining it with a software based automation system, that would be a non-issue since you could handle IR at that level.
 
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