I know that this thread is quite old, but I bumped into it during my troubleshooting, and wanted to update it with what I’d found in case it helps someone else.
Background:
I’ve had opensprinkler for 3 years, and the first 2 years went well. This year has been a battle.
My Scenario
I was seeing frequent lock-ups on my OpenSprinkler, where the UI would completely stop responding (the browser would basically throw a 404 page not found). Rebooting the device would bring it back up for a period of seconds, minutes, or hours – it never seemed to be consistent. After dealing with this for a month, I decided to try to figure out it. Being a technical guy, I did the usual networking things (made sure other devices were accessible, tried accessing inside the LAN and over the WAN, tried changing IPs and my forwarding in case I had an IP conflict, etc. Nothing seemed to make any difference.
To be fair, I was also seeing some weird behavior on another networked device, my multi-room audio system that had also been running flawlessly for years.
Troubleshooting
I started to think of changes to infrastructure, and I had added a few new network devices. I disconnected these, thinking that had to be the source, and it seemed good, for a few days, and then the problem came back.
I have a fully-managed network infrastructure (with managed switches that allow me to isolate things at the port level among other things). I isolated the OpenSprinkler on it’s own VLAN (network) where it is the only device. After doing this, the issue has gone away – I think that this basically tells me that the OpenSprinkler basically can’t play nicely with something else on my network – at idle without anyone around I have about 20 devices on the network, so this could be coming from anywhere (DirecTV DVRs, thermostats, TVs, Vacuum cleaner, gaming consoles, tablets, PCs, Printers, NVR / Cameras, IP Phones, A/V Receivers, Multi-room audio controllers, Sonos devices, Personal Weather Stations, etc). Since almost all of these devices are “black boxes” with the exception of the Tablets and PCs, it’s nearly impossible to troubleshoot. If you have an OpenSprinkler, you’re probably the type like me that may have other devices.
Going Forward
In the end, I’m going to segment my network into 3 VLANs. LAN (Printers / Tablets / Phones / Printers), IoT – OS (OpenSprinkler by itself), and IoT (Everything else). I’m going to limit access from IoT and IoT – OS so that they can only access devices on their own VLAN, and I’m going to allow access from the LAN to the other two VLANs so we can still access these items from our Tablets / PCs / Phones.
I realize many other people probably don’t have the equipment (managed switches) or skillsets to do this, but after battling this for the better part of 3 months, it’s just the easiest way to work around it – keep it by itself in a controlled environment.