Laptop control of ardupilot over ELRS

Hardware Radios
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Hi, I’m trying to add auxiliary control of an ardupilot quadcopter via a laptop.

I have a Radiomaster TX12 (ELRS) bound to the Radiomaster RP1 receiver and everything’s working fine. I am hoping to have a laptop also connected to the quadcopter’s RP1 receiver and to have the laptop send RC override signals on channel 8 - this is basically a way of triggering an action in a custom lua script I have running.

On the laptop side, I have an external TX module (Radiomaster Ranger Nano) connected to laptop via USB (which seems only to be for flashing/updating firmware) and an FTDI USB-to-UART chip connecting the female pins on the Ranger Nano - but I’m unable to see any useful traffic on the “S.PORT” pin. I had hoped to inject ELRS signal on this pin.

Could anyone point me to similar projects using this approach, or generally suggest what I might be getting wrong here?

More broadly, do others achieve laptop control by simply adding another 2-way telemetry link? I had hoped to keep the quadcopter as light and simple as possible…

Thanks!

AKA

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ELRS Mavlink. You can use USB or wifi to connect MP to your radio.

I have done both methods, RC link and a second radio for telemetry. As well as a single link with RC and telemetry (ELRS MavLink, RFD900TXMod, MLRS). For me it depends on how critical/expensive/big the drone is. For my personal, smaller stuff I’m more likely to use the single link method. For more more complex setups then I like the multiple radios system. No one-size fits all answer.

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