After a lot of experimentation and research on communicating with various Vista panel the biggest problem I've identified with using the ECP is the large delay for various updates. The higher end boards us a serial port and RS-232 to communicate and the board doesn't delay between the various messages like it does on ECP. It seems a combination of both the serial port and ECP would be the best way in terms of speed and amount of useful information (the serial port doesn't give you the wealth that ECP does).
Recently I discovered the 4232CBM board which Honeywell sells as an interface to the higher end home automation system. There is darned little info available to the public on it and nothing about the API it implements. However, I've been able to determine it uses two ECP address - an AUI address and address 25. It appears to me that it picks up various info from the standard AUI keyboard communicates and that the more modern board know about address 25 and send info to that address with all the delays built in that is standard for keypads - the best of everything! The newer boards that us this like the Turbo series and the 21ip know how to talk to this board and Honeywell says that HA is no longer supported on the serial port for HA but rather to us the 4232CBM in docs that I've read.
I was considering writing a plug-in for Vera that uses both AD2USB and the serial port on the 128 series but the 4232CBM method seems better and it provides benefit for all the Vista family with recent firmware
So, the big question is, do the AD2USB folks have any experience with this and can we get the AD2XXX to emulate the 4232CBM? That would solve a lot of problems. As well, does anyone have any info on it's protocol/API?
The third question is does anyone have one that they'd like to sell me so I can start figuring out exactly how it communicates. I see them new for $115 and I'd like to pay less for a used one or perhaps trade something for it such as a high-end Honeywell panel.
Cheers,
Ron