@rongross: while OpenSprinkler Pi and Beagle would be able to make weather queries directly, the microcontroller-based OpenSprinkler is not powerful enough to parse the queries directly, due to the difficulty of processing complex XML data. Therefore it’s necessary to relay it through a cloud server (you can use your own server if needed). Basically the server parses the XML data and reduces it to a few simple numbers and return it to OpenSprinkler.