If your work around involved using ‘/etc/init.d/OpenSprinker.sh stop’ regularly, I don’t think it’s a safe solution, because as you noticed, this can leave valves open forever. Technically to solve this problem, when you stop the script from running it needs to send a signal to the firmware to tell it to turn off all open valves.
Setting os.status.rain_sensed affects all stations that are influenced by rain sensor/rain delay, in that if rain_sensed is true, stations (unless if they are set to ‘ignore rain’) will stop running. Also any change to this flag will be logged as ‘rain sensor’ events.
Calling reset_all_stations() will not affect future programs during the day. It merely resets all stations. If there is a program scheduled to run in the next minute, it will still run without any problem.