Oddball questions for the pros about the OmniPro II

[bluelake321]

Question 1: I am sure the answer is "NO" but can HAI Thermostats be connected to a Expansion enclosure - and if so, how?

Question 2: Does anyone know the use case for the "Serial Address" dropdown at the top of the EXPANSION-->SERIAL page? I thought I read somewhere is was intended for some ability to link multiple Omni systems together. Does anyone know or have any documentation?

 

[McKinneySmart]

Ref Q1: Correct. The Thermostats need to connect directly to the main board. (At one time in the past, I asked the development team at HAI why the Omnistat devices were not added to the console bus. After all, it is device that 'communicates' with the board. Similar to the consoles. I never got a good answer. I wrote it off as a '...if it ain't broke, don't fix it...' mindset.)

 

[bluelake321]

Ref Q1: Correct. The Thermostats need to connect directly to the main board. (At one time in the past, I asked the development team at HAI why the Omnistat devices were not added to the console bus. After all, it is device that 'communicates' with the board. Similar to the consoles. I never got a good answer. I wrote it off as a '...if it ain't broke, don't fix it...' mindset.)

I'm surprised they don't just connect to one of the serial ports as they are just RS232. My guess is because they can communicate at such low speeds, they used a zone and output terminal and just bit banged the serial protocol.

I want to run two thermostats in a remote building that only has a fiber connection. So the plan is to run an expansion enclosure over SM fiber. If that is successful, ill see if I can run the thermostats over fiber as well.