That’s correct. I am really glad Ray and Samer agreed to include the GPIO Station stuff as that along with the Remote Station functionality makes the ecosystem very extensible and opens up new control scenarios. I have three setups at home:
1) Main Controller in the back garden: I wanted to add two more stations to my main back garden OSPi controller that already had 8 valves and a flow meter connected. I did this by wiring up a sainsmart dual-relay board that I had lying around to a couple of free gpio pins. I use the GPIO Station functionality to get OS Firmware to control the extra relays and connected valves.
2) Remote Station in the front garden: I live in a terrace block and needed a way to irrigate a small front lawn but can’t run a cable to the main OSPi controller in the back garden. So I wired up a single mechanical relay to a RPi Zero and run OS Firmware with GPIO Station functionality to control a single valve. The RPiZ has wifi usb to connect to my network and is setup as a Remote Station on the main OSPI controller in the back garden so that I can keep all of my programme scheduling centralised.
3) Indoor Station: I wanted to control my Claber Oasis indoor watering system in the same way as my front and back garden setups so I have combined an ESP8266 with a motor shield to drive the 9V DC latching valve on the Claber. I have custom code running on the ESP that mimics the OpenSprinkler Remote Station api so that the main OSPi controller in the back garden can turn the Claber valve on/off using the Remote Station functionality. Again, keeps all the programme scheduling together.
Cheers, Pete