Is there a way to fly an ardupilot without a radio? I’m wondering if I can just use the USB cord to tell the arducopter what to do. Can I treat my computer as a transmitter somehow?
Ideally, we’d like to get to an XBee system working , but my friend is still working on getting the XBees to communicate. Because of this, I’m wondering if there is a way to do a flight test without using the given Telem port and just simply using the given USB cord.
Drop the Xbees and get some 3DR radios much much easier than xBees to use.
I agree that adding a joystick mode to the mavlink ground station features might be useful.
For instance for long range FPV flights when the range of FPV video link outperforms the R/C radio by far. Existing long range RC systems mainly use the 430 MHz band, and thats where the 3DR radio operates. Adding a 430MHz long range sys might interfere with existing 3DR radio and it would be more elegant to use the 3DR radio and mavlink for this purpose.
The DJI WKM system has a joystick mode in their ground station. The USB joystick can be either traditional RC style or game style.
Mission Planner already supports using PC joysticks for a long time!
Please read the documentation before posting!
Oops. Sorry! 
But good to know :mrgreen: