Today in Joshua Tree National Park

About Today in the Park

Joshua Tree

National Park Service
U.S. Department of the Interior

Joshua Tree National Park

Today in Joshua Tree National Park

About Today in the Park

Today In The Park

“Today in the Park” is a internet-based system to provide visitors with key information about this day in Joshua Tree National Park. It was inspired by the purchase of TV displays for the visitor centers, which provided a way to communicate park information directly to visitors in real time:

Weather for several days for several locations, including theJumbo Rocks campground.
Sun and Moon rising and setting times and moon phase.
Live data from Lost Horse RS for air quality, temperature, and wind
Visitor Advice, Park Announcements, and Weather.gov alerts.
Campsite information, including live availability from recreation.gov
Events for the next 3 days.

Viewing The Data

The data is provided in four formats:

A “slide show” of pages.
Designed for TV screens. Each viewing location can choose which sections (slides) appear in the rotation. The TV requires only internet access (e.g., any modern Samsung TV) and it only accesses the internet once every 15 minutes for updates.
A one-page summary.
Designed to be posted at Visitor Centers or elsewhere. Includes weather, announcements, and calendar.
A complete web site
Can be viewed on-line or printed as a multi-page document, with one page per topic. (e.g, fees page, or weather)

There are also several individual topic pages that display just one piece of information from the main Today pages.

Advantages

Most of the information is self-updating, using a variety of internet sources such as weather.gov and the eps site.
Manual information is entered in an easy-to-use web form that can be updated on any computer.
It retrieves the calendar from nps.gov, plus it has a built-in calendar that’s easy to update and can supplement or replace items on the nps calendar. Events can be marked as cancelled if necessary.
It provides a centralized source for key information, so the same information is available everywhere.
It provides near-real-time information to every visitor center or web-site user.
It eliminates need for rangers to research information and compose signs for visitor centers.
It eliminates the need for any special hardware for TV interface.

Resources

TV setup. How to view the pages on a TV screen.
Index of all site Pages
Ranger Login (requires login)

How it works

The site works by periodically (like every 1/2 hour) querying various web resources to get updated information on weather, alerts, air quality, etc. This information is stored until the next update.

When a web page is requested, the stored information is retrieved and compiled into the form needed for display, and then sent a template for the requested web page. The template does the final formatting for displaying the page.

The site runs on a linux-based server and is built using a language called "PHP", which is commonly used for web sites, including the nps.gov sites for parks.

Information Sources

Weather information comes from both weather.gov (NOAA) and weatherapi.com (commercial site). The NOAA data is focused better on a geographic area, so it forecasts for Jumbo Rocks, not just 29 palms. The weatherapi data is substituted if weather.gov fails, but the data is for 29 Palms and Indio, not Jumbo rocks and Cottonwood.

Current data comes from the sensors at Lost Horse Ranger Station, updated every few hours. If data is not available, it is reported as "n/a".

Astro data (sun, moon) is from weatherapi.com. Should be non-controversial.

Air quality is from airnow.com (EPS site).

Fire Danger is entered manually by rangers.

Alerts are entered manually, by rangers, but informed by weather.gov alerts for Joshua Tree National Park.

Notices and Advice are entered manually by rangers

The Calendar is drawn from the jotr calendar on nps.gov. That is supplemented by a built-in local calendar, where it is easy to quickly add events not on the nps calendar. Any of the events can be marked as cancelled; they continue to show on-line but with a "Cancelled" legend. Note: Calendar events no longer display after their start time has passed, so late in the day, you are likely to see "No Events Scheduled".

Campground status (reserved, closed) is manually entered by rangers. Availability for reserved sites comes from recreation.gov, updated every 30 minutes. Available sites in First-Come First-Served campgrounds can be manually entered. Tags next to the availability number indicates the age of the data; data over 12 hours old is removed.

The web pages all use Google Rubik font.

Printing Today Pages

The page "today.php" can be printed from a web browser, and appropriate pages posted in a Visitor Center.

Printing will

change the margins to 0.5" on 8.5x11 pages
reduce the type size,
remove the "Current temperature" entry.
Reformat page headings to NPS print standard.

It should fit on five pages, each with room for expanding content. (today and alerts on page 1; weather on page 2, calendar on page 3; campgrounds on page 4; fees on page 5). Campgrounds page doesn't include site availability, so is fairly static.

If printed to a PDF, then the pdf can easily be distributed electronically

Web Sites

There are (at least) 3 different web sites used for the system:

Live: This is the live site used for the TV displays or anything intended for public access.
Jotrx: This is a "test" site. It is exactly like the live site, but the data can be different. This is for users to make changes on the admin, calendar, or camps page and see what the results are, without affecting the live site.
Beta: This is a site used to test software before it is moved to the live site.

Help

If you want to change any of the information, or if you have any problems or comments, contact the developer John Springer. Phone or text to (503)329-7909 or email john@digitalmx.com.