So I had 2 ESP-01's on hand, and I managed to kill both of them. I was struggling to have the ESP fire the relays while they had a load across them, and it was resetting the ESP every time I tried. Looked to me like the relay power draw (same wall wart powering both the ESP and the relay board) was enough to kill the ESP when the relay fired under load. In my misguided attempts at correcting this, I managed to burn out both ESP units. They communicate over wifi and serial still, but it is iffy, and new programming will not take.

While I was congratulating myself on a job well done with the sprinkler controller, and had plans for the second ESP-01 board as well (all before frying them), I had put in an order for 2 more ESP units, this time the -03 variant, just to have on hand in case the muse strikes me in the future. I could have bodged on some manner of header that allowed me to plug the ESP-03 units into the socket I had worked up on the original sprinkler board, but I didn't really like that idea. I designed a whole new board, based around the ESP-03, and as I didn't want to wait for OSH Park, I just etched it at home. the board design:

I have done a number of successful double sided boards at home before, but it does take some time, and there is a significantly increased chance of board error, so I did this one single sided. That means the surface mounted ESP-03 unit is on the back of the board, and all the other components are on the front. The board came out of the wash just fine, and I had it populated in no time. I swapped out the original 750ma 5V power supply that was used on the first board for a 2A 5V unit I had in the scrap bin. It is likely overkill, but it works like a charm.

The new board has been in place for about a week now, with no required resets. Seems very stable, and works great. I updated the html as well:

I will add some scheduling functionality at some point in the future, but while I still need to bring the dog in manually, and close off the doggy door, this solution works fine. Maybe some sort of dog call + dog presence sensor + auto closing doggy door coupled with the sprinkler schedule for a future project.

I am going to mark this project as complete, although it does miss one of the original design goals of having a scheduling system.