@David: thanks for sharing your experience.
1) Regarding the label on the case: the missing ‘Power’ and ’24VAC’ labels are intentional. We are transitioning to use DC powered circuit, so in the future the power supply to OpenSprinkler will be 9VDC (instead of 24VAC). Although it’s powered by DC, it can still work with 24VAC sprinkler solenoids. The main reason to switch to DC powered circuit is that it makes the the controller compatible with both standard 24VAC solenoids as well as other types of DC solenoids. In addition, for international customers, DC power supplies are much easier to source than AC transformers. Due to this reason, the enclosures have removed the ’24VAC label’. But I admit that it should probably at least have a ‘Power In’ label or something that indicates the purpose of that port.
The ‘Power’ label used to be for the power switch. In the future we are planning to remove the power switch, and instead make that port a connector for flow meters/sensors. Due to this reason, the label ‘Power’ has been removed too.
2) Regarding the need to select the number of stations — this is just due to historic reason. Older versions of the controller were not able to automatically detect the number of stations on the expansion boards, so we left this as an option for users to select. Also, as Samer said, because OpenSprinkler supports RF (radio frequency) stations, users may want to set a larger number of stations than physically available. In the future we may consider splitting the virtual stations into its own group, so that they won’t be mixed with the physical stations.