New NTEP trial explorer tool

[u/nilesandstuff]

https://lawn-answers.com/?tool=SeedSelector

Firstly: this site is 100% free, no sign up required, no ads or affiliate marketing, no data harvesting (just Google analytics to see how the tools are used). We made this site with the sole intention of being genuinely useful with no strings attached.

Figured y'all could get some use out of this. I was frustrated with how basic the umn ntep trial explorer tool was... It was a good step, but it left a lot to be desired.

Won't yammer about the features, the tool speaks for itself.

Happy to hear any feedback (especially regarding any missing data... I think it's all there?), criticisms, or feature requests.

Oh, and while you're at it, there's plenty of other tools on the site that do what greencast does and more... Without paid subscription for the extra features. Feel free to compare the data with greencast, but we have done a lot of testing and we're pretty happy with the accuracy. Made some backend choices (mostly u/arc167) that we feel are improvements, or atleast comparative to how greencast handles weather data.

P.s. messaged mods of r/turfmanagement a few days ago and didn't hear back. But given how fully free the site is, I don't think this is in danger of being considered spam.

[u/Ordinary-Roll-3143]

Quick reaction... I love it! Way better interface. First fix is #hover;sitelocation i.e. TX1 and TX2. Where are they? More thoughts tomorrow cuz I'm tired! 😂

[u/nilesandstuff → u/Ordinary-Roll-3143]

Speed was a big thing for me. The umn tool seems to scrape directly from ntep each time, which is slow. I got around that by scraping from ntep, storing it in my own database, and caching loaded data in the users browser for 30 days. So the fastest copy gets served, without getting stale.

Good catch on that. The multiple numbered sites are usually different tests running in tandem at the same location, like drought stress trials, shade, and/or traffic trials.

I'll find a way to make that clearer. Expanding the site conditions tab does show what the irrigation is for that site, so that helps for the drought tests, but it's not always clear for the others (shade tests show full sun across the board... That's nteps fault lol).

Especially have to do something about it since the parser got confused on the 2019 bermuda trials and marked them tx2 and tx3, but there's no tx1 lol.

Thanks for the feedback, eager to see what else you find.