I did this exact thing last night. I labeled all the wiring and removed an old Hunter controller and wiring modules. The Hunter system used a backplane that wiring pieces would plug into. A nice concept but the thing was intermittent with the old cable. With all guts removed from the box I just screwed the new controllers into the back of the box. I installed the wires and plugged in the AC. I had tested the unit for a week or so in my office so I had it pre-configured with the WiFi and a program to run. I used the mobile program and run through a quick test. I’m blown away at how nice this is. Much better than my old setup and give me real time valve current. Amazing and want to thank all the folks who have been working on this.
I have done various IOT programs on the ESP8266 in the past year and can tell you that platform is not easy to make it work solid. You guys have done a good job because so far I have not run into any issues. Thanks again.