I don’t believe it is getting the NTP sync but instead reading the correct time from the time zone. I suspect the time zone of -5:00 is coded into the firmware and since we are not in DST it reads the correct time for Boston regardless of it getting NTP. If I change the time zone to -8:00 it doesn’t read Boston time anymore, instead it reads Boston time -3 hours.
I am confused what you are saying here. From what I see, NTP syncing is now working on your OpenSprinkler, isn’t it?
The time zone is never hard-coded in the firmware — it’s stored as an option which you can change (although normally you shouldn’t need to because it’s automatically changed based on the time zone query).