Interesting description. I've never seen a controller spin and I don't follow what you mean by a "pin". Be that as it may be, a controller is basically just a timer that opens and closes electric valves at set times of the day. They are not especially expensive, and when one fails, it's no big deal to replace them. You need on that will handle 12 zones, so that will cost more than one like mine that only needs to control 4 zones, but they all work essentially the same way. The controller is connected to the valves with a hot wire to each, and a single common wire or ground that is daisy chained from valve to valve. So you should have 12 wires in total coming out of the controller.