The second generation of Obelisk SC1 miners doesn't provide any complete standard interface for monitoring. It doesn't include hashrate and a number of other important properties that you would expect from an ASIC miner. This is why it show up in Awesome Miner with just some information.
This worked fine with the first generation of these miners, but then they decided to no longer support this way of monitoring their miners.
According to the guys writing the firmware for them their API will allow all this information and alot more.
This is the problem - they invented their own API instead of following the standard CgMiner API's for monitoring and management of ASIC miners. It would be better if they simply fix the hashrate reporting over the CgMiner API. Then they would have an ASIC miner compatible with all existing monitoring tools on the market and everyone would be happy.
From an Awesome Miner point of view it would of course be possible to implement any custom ASIC API, including this one, but it's a matter of priorities given that it may not be a small task.