My co-worker that does some electronics work looked over my breadboard this morning and agrees that it all looks like it is hooked up as described in the schematic. So that route looks like a bust since the old thread appears dead at this point.
The good news is that Valentine is willing to share at least some information, so assuming I can figure out how to interface with it (which I may have accidentally already figured out
) I now have the communication protocol
-dave