Ray,
Thanks for the background, but here is my bottom line: I bought a NETWORKED irrigation controller. I put it on my network and found that communications to the device was intermittent. I did some of my own troubleshooting with no effect.
After posting my issue on the forum, I found a few other users were trying to be helpful, offering suggestions on how to debug and troubleshoot. The response I got from you, the developer of this product, was “well what did you expect, it’s basically a DIY toy with under-powered hardware”. For me this is a hard stop.
In terms of other units on the market, I did some more research and recently bought a RainMachine HD. It’s been on my network for the last 3 days and has been rock-solid, despite my hesitation with using wifi. It also has a fully documented API that I can use, and the best part is that it can still be programmed and operated locally without a network connection. Of course, it’s $140 more than the cost of an Opensprinkler, but it comes with a 24V adapter, has 12 zones and a very nice touchscreen interface.