Control remote zone using MQTT

I am not sure if this has been covered before. But, in case anyone is interested, it is indeed possible to control a remote zone from OSPI using MQTT.

While you cannot specifically program a zone to communicate to an MQTT server, you can set up OSPI to publish designated events to an MQTT server. Two of those events are start and stop zone. So, all that is necessary to do is to set up a dummy configuration for the zone (like RF to a random code). Then, when the zone operates, the information will be communicated to the MQTT server.
For example:

opensprinkler/station/8 {“state”:1,”duration”:5}
opensprinkler/station/8 {“state”:0,”duration”:5}

FWIW, I use an HTTP connection to a non-existent IP address. At that point, there would need to be a subscriber that would actually act on the message, But, that is outside the control of OpenSprinkler.