I had every expectation that If I read the user manual close enough that I would find that I was expecting OpenSprinkler to do things that were clearly not possible.
While the Geek in me would have taken the time to ready the User Manual carefully, the Everyday-User in me cares more about What it WILL do and WON’T do rather than WHY/HOW it does what it does.
When you take into account the exceptional capabilities of OpenSprinkler to allow 30+ programs, Complex Day of Week programs, Interval programs, and Multiple Watering Periods per program, you don’t have to have to have more than a few valves to control before you can find yourself with programs that interfere with one another. If your watering system doesn’t support having multiple valves open at the same time, then it can be tedious to make sure that there aren’t any conflicts. And then, when a person has it all worked out, all it takes is some seasonal changes and it can start all over.
Given my brief experience with OpenSprinkler, the one thing that occurs to me that would easily permit spotting conflicts is a Global Program Preview feature. Such a preview would temporarily set all programs set to operate on the same day and turn off the Sequential feature. With this as a preview, it becomes easy to see where there are conflicts and the user can make adjustments.