Video Tour of Searle Brothers Nursery, Inc.& The Rainforest Collection®

1-26-14

After some serious practice with flying a DJI Phantom Quadcopter and recording video with a GoPro camera, Jeff and Travis Searle made a short video of the nursery today. It was rather windy but otherwise the weather was perfect for flying and recording. It is still considered practice but it is the best video made so far.

The video is a flyover through the nursery, starting at the entrance near 172nd Avenue and continuing down the road and into the main shadehouse. Jeff is guiding and directing the video as he walks on foot along the path as Travis is piloting and navigating the drone. Larry's German Shepard dog Charlie was following them as he did not like the quadcopter much and would have grabbed it if he could.

- 2:30 - One of Jeff's first ever Foxtail Palms, Wodyetia bifurcata, on the left in the landscape next to the overhang roof. It was also one of the first specimens in South Florida.

- 3:01 - A pause before continuing. Flying under the popular Royal Poinciana took some careful piloting.

- 3:33 - Cuban Belly Palm, Acrocomia crispa, on the corner next to the shadehouse.

- 3:46 - Jeff has his hand on a Coccothrinax sp. 'Azul', then following soon by...

- 3:49 - Beccariophoenix alfredii.

- 4:27 - The mystery and ultra compact Coccothrinax sp. with a hand from Jeff.

- 5:25 - A Pelagodoxa henryana that had spent the week in the booth over at TPIE.

- 6:19 - The grouping of Licuala peltata var. sumawongii that resides near the sidewalk intersection.

- 7:00 - Jeff shows a group of Cyrtostachys sp. 'Hybrid' specimens.

- 7:36 - A Dwarf Betel Nut Palm, Areca catechu var. 'dwarf' just off the sidewalk.

- 8:26 - Did a quick U-turn to show the two Beccariophoenix madagascariensis that border the exit to the main shadehouse.

http://youtu.be/ZlYy2X46_ho

Ryan

Thanks for sharing, for those who, like me, are unable to be there in person!

Unbelievable visuals!

A nice dose of skill is required for a ride like this!

Great job done, thanks for sharing!

Nice video & nursery. The GoPro Cam does a good job of video stabilization, along w/ the piolt. Did you have WiFi connection back to smart phone so you can see real time? These quad copters are going to be pretty popular thing. Thanks for posting, you must be the first.

Good Gawd almighty! Now that's a nursery! Mind blowingly gorgeous! Love the music very exciting and funny at times too!

I am sooooooo going to your spring sale!!!! Who's in? Let's all go so we can meet one another! That would be a ton of fun! And we can all go home with carloads and truckloads of stuff we really don't need but simply must have! Lol

Hmmm I might need to hitch up the trailer!

Nice job guys, thanks for sharing!

Totally Cool !

Great to see the nursery from the air & great "in-shade-house" flying.

Next stop :

The Searle Nursery Air Races

Great movie! Action, beauty, palms, music-it has it all!

Don't you want to start your own side business photographing everyone else's property?

It's amazing what can be done with technology in the right hands!

Fantastic video! Out here in Arizona,Realtors have been using this tool lately to showcase properties and surrounding houses.

aztropic

Mesa,Arizona

Nice way to feature the nursery and outstanding selection.

I sure wish there was someone like you on the west coast.

Good Job, really shows how big the nursery is and such a fantastic selection of palms and exotics. To bad all of Florida isn’t planted with those cool palms.

Great video!

Wow, that's the future! And what a beautifully managed nursery, not a weed in sight.

Thank you for all the kind comments! Travis and I had a lot of fun making this too. Ever since Travis bought this, he's been wanting to promote the nursery, and I thought especially for the upcoming biennial. Maybe it will help sway a few potential biennial attendees.

Anyways, we have a few more up and coming ideas to hopefully put together.

Try delivering some 4" or 1 gal containers with it. You can just drop it in the predug holes remotely. Watch out, there is some competition out there.

Thanks for the tour , great piloting and thats a very big set up you have there Jeff Searle.

Pete

... Did you have WiFi connection back to smart phone so you can see real time? ...

Using the WiFi ability of the GoPro was considered for POV piloting, but it would interfere with the Phantom's on board navigation (GPS, compass) and thus was strongly recommended by the manufacturer that you do not use it. We have used the WiFi ability for other recordings, such as for paintball and other things, but for now its going to be line-of-sight flying. It would be nice to be able to fly it like that as you could extend the range beyond visual contact and not worry about losing sight of the drone. The same company produces models and is designing future models that incorporate dedicated POV video, but they are much more pricey. Some include six and eight rotors and are made for advanced search and rescue operations and for military purposes. I think it would be worth it just for a model with a longer lasting battery.

Ryan

NIcely done, Searle! That is so cool! What a great way to show the overall layout of the property and to highlight some of the killer plant material that you always have.

How cool is that, great idea, thanks guys, Ed

Great video & great idea for my next birthday gift! (palms & a Quadcopter)

Wow ! Cool video ! The palms look great.

WoW!!! Superb! Applause! Applause!

VERY FREAKING AWESOME!

Nicely done! Very impressive!!

Fantastic video !

Video has been blocked. Can't watch it.

Great video. Jeff has one of the coolest nursery's around.

I just checked, it worked perfectly.

Now it's working! Cool!!

I just checked, it worked perfectly.

Most likely the chair to keyboard interface error.

Jeff - Always enjoy pics of your nursery - especially look forward to the annual plant sale series - but had no idea your operation was so large - very impressive and very nice selection of plant material - glad you can find time to stay on-line with the PT crowd. BTW - looks like your dog enjoyed the Quadcopter as much as everyone else.

Mahalo - gmp

Jeff is that Alfie trunking? It looks amazing!! But it was hard to see every detail from the small phone screen. Really incredibly good looking and healthy specimen from what I could see. How long in the ground?

Jeff- You guys need to get a bigger quad so it can make deliveries...I'm not too far up the road.- Peter

Hi Peter,

Now wouldn't that be something to see a quadcopter zipping up over the interstate with a large palm hanging from it.

But on a more serious note, I am more than capable of making deliveries with our trucks and enclosed trailer to bring you a few goodies from The Rainforest Collection. I'm actually in the middle of pulling a great selection of palms, crotons, and other tropical plants for my 20th annual sale down in Key West in a couple of weekends. So anything is possible, as long as it's worth our time.

ANYBODY interested? Send me a PM.

Thanks, Jeff

The place looks great Jeff.

I bought a similar helicopter camera for Mike for Christmas. His camera only runs 18 minutes. I think yours is more sophisticated.

Both the video and nursery/garden are fantastic. I also had no idea how large it was. I hope the Miami tour will allow us enough time to see it all. Seems like you would need several days to do that.

Lee

I wish I could make a living out of this.

This is really fantastic. Awesome job.

Great work Travis. You could overlay some dialogue too couldn't you, I mean still have the music then have Dad talking every now and then.The practises are going very well, going through the shade house was terrific then back up to show the shade house roof, excellent. There's got to be a buck in there someplace, I don't know where. Good luck, look forward to more. Take some biennial footage perhaps, get it on DVD, I'd buy, hell I'll order now.

Some other soundtrack songs for consideration:

Fly like an Eagle - Steve Miller

Eye in the sky - Alan Parsons

I want to take you higher - Sly and family stone

etc.