I am not entirely sure if I understand the request. But let me first explain how the remote station feature is implemented, hopefully this will clarify some of the details. Basically the remote station (same as RF station) is implemented by sending HTTP commands to the remote stations. The question is what’s the duration that should be sent to the remote stations. Because the feature is implemented at a fairly low level (in the solenoid activation functions), it does not know the exact water time scheduled. This is done to make the remote station work just like a physically connected stations — when the master controller tells it to turn on, it turns on, and the ‘turn-on’ action should not need to provide a timer.
For reliability reasons, the firmware has a ‘special station auto-refresh’ flag. If checked, this turns on a remote station for only about 2 minutes at a time, and the master controller must renew the turn on command to keep the remote station running. This way, if the WiFi signal is lost, the remote station will not remain on for more than 2 minutes, to avoid it being left on indefinitely. As a result, if you try to read the remaining water time from the remote station, it won’t be more than 2 minutes.
The exception is when the ‘special station auto-refresh’ is turned off. In this case, the master controller won’t renew the turn-on command, and so each time it turns on the remote station, it will use the maximum water time (18 hours), and then the remote station will be turned-off whenever the master controller sends a turn-off command. This is useful sometimes if you don’t want the master controller to keep sending refreshing commands, but the danger of doing so would be to leave the remote station on for a long time (up to 18 hours) if the master controller loses connection to the remote station.
In short summary, the remote station doesn’t know the exact water time because the feature is implemented at very low level and does not know the water time; keeping the auto-refresh on will resolve the reliability issue.