I’m starting to wonder if I have a defective unit.
I tried to get the answer to your first question. Now, I will preface this by saying I changed and touched NOTHING since I wrote the post above. So I was able (as of last night) to connect to the device, but now I can’t. I went into the utility closet and the unit itself was squealing quite loudly (for a small electronic device). I did notice a noise yesterday too (even before connecting the valves), but it was much more quiet. I did a factory reset and it did that, but every 5 and 30 seconds it would reboot on its own. I was unable to successfully connect to it to get the answer to your question. I’ll see the OS_XXXXXX wifi and I can connect to it briefly, and the unit will show its local IP but I can’t connect to that. At least not in time before it resets. I’ve disconnected all the valves’ wires to rule that out, but no change.
As for the second question: no, no master or pump zone. This is a pretty straight-forward basic controller-to-valve setup.