Virtual station mapping to local station

Hello!

I have purchased but not yet received my opensprinkler, and am in the middle of a massive landscaping renovation at home. I am looking for a software solution to a particular challenge, namely ocassionally integrating a fertijector controlled by solenoid-driven valves (inlet and outlet, 0.45 inrush current each).

I can set up both inlet and outlet valves in the parallel group, and write programs that run those two valves for 15 minutes, and each of the three zones I want to fertilize in the same sequential group for 5 minutes each, and the program preview looks good (injector valves open, other zones cycle appropriately, all valves closed at the end of the program). My concern is the current required to actuate three valves simultaneously – the two injector valves and the first zone valve (when opening) and last zone valve (when closing).

It doesn’t look like the global station delay can solve this, as it delays actuation between two valves in the same sequential zone, but won’t offset the parallel valves from each other or from the first sequential valve.

I though there might be a way to do this by flagging the injector valves as master 1 and 2, as the master valve offsets would space the solenoid actuation apart by a few seconds, but then any zone where I sometimes want to run the injector will _always_ run with the injector open.

So I had the idea – perhaps I could create a virtual zone that just remaps to a physical zone on the same controller, so that only the remapped virtual zone is set to “use master 1” and “use master 2.” Google’s AI warns me that if I make zone 9 a remote zone (IP) pointing to the loopback 127.0.0.1, that heartbeat traffic may cause network overflow problems. With a HTTP zone, however, AI tells me it may be possible. I’m writing to ask if there’s any elegant way to accomplish this goal – either by creating a virtual zone that controls a physical zone on the same controller (so the virtual can be configured to use the “master” injector valves, while the corresponding regular zone does not), or via some other programmatic approach I haven’t thought of. I’d rather avoid double wiring the zone solenoid to two different stations (so I don’t have to buy isolation relays to prevent backfeeding current into a closed station), but am open to suggestions.