I must admit, I totally forgot about this one. It turns out that the chr 18 and 27 are command params for the device; so those 2 are needed only for commands, so i wasn't needed.
The issue I was having was with the communication protocol on the device, even though the directions required 2-way communication enabled on it, it turns out that it needed 1-way communication. I found that out when I reset the device to factory settings and sent out data to it and it worked without any issues.
Goes to show you, not to always believe in the manuals.