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All the various docs say maximum 56 stations. And that is the physical limit for one controller (8 + 3×16). But with the ability to define Remote Stations on more than one controller, could you have a system where you had, say 48 zones on the master, 16 zones on another controller and 32 zones on a third controller? Would either the firmware or the web app choke on this, or would this work?
This limit is mainly due to OpenSprinkler 2.x has limited amount of EEPROM, and storing that many zones takes a significant amount of EEPROM space. Technically OpenSprinkler 3.0 and OSPi has no such limitation, so in theory they can be extended to handle a much larger number of zones. For compatibility reasons (particularly if someone is transitioning from one controller to another and wants to copy the configuration files), we limit them to the same number of zones. Also, 56 zones is sufficient for most applications.
The 56 zones limit applies to both physical zones and virtual zones — each virtual zone (like remote zone) still occupies one slot on the master controller, and storing its settings and including it in programs takes the same amount of EEPROM or flash memory space.
Thanks for the reply. I have about 100 zones spread across 3 physical controllers right now and would like to replace them with this. I am a programmer and wouldn’t mind spending the time to fork off code to make it work for me. I’m caught in the classic marginal use case scenario. To handle 100 zones half decently (meaning web based programming like this) in something more commercial is not only very expensive (like a $10,000 system), but way too complicated as well (meant for golf courses, really).
So, OpenSprinkler 3.0 (the microcontroller version) has a larger EEPROM then?
I am guessing (hoping) that the changes will be fairly minimal. Presumably both the the microcontroller (firmware) code and the App code need to be modified. Any pointers on where to look to find what needs to be tweaked would be appreciated. Also, does OS 3.0 allow remote (via Wifi) uploading of new firmware? One other question: OpenSprinkler 3.0 refers to the hardware, correct, and the latest firmware is 2.17?
If you have that many zones, you should consider using a Linux computer (or Raspberry Pi) as a ‘Virtual’ master controller — our firmware code is unified and can compile and run on any Linux system. That way you can modify the firmware to support as many zones as you want, not limited by the amount of EEPROM on the physical controllers. Then all your physical controllers are set as remote controllers listening to the virtual master.
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