Is the pilot radio commands still going through my 2.4Ghz receiver RF link or is it going through the 900Mhz Xbee link?
If it goes through the 900Mhz xbee what happens when the link is broken or the autopilot loses power for any reason?
Does Manual mode switch back to my radio's 2.4Ghz or does it still pass through the Xbee 900mhz connection? The PPM Throttle Failsafe mentioned in the Ardupilot appendix named dropped a 2.4ghz rc system, so I take it that failsafe mode switches back to the 2.4Ghz connection?
As of now there is still no way to fly the plane back to home since failsafe puts it into Stabilize mode correct? (As gtoons mentioned in the first comment http://code.google.com/p/ardupilot-mega/wiki/Failsafe)
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Anyone can tell me how you can switch between using the 2.4Ghz RC radio link and going through the Xbee 900 Mhz link for manual joystick control?
Reason I'm asking is because our previous plane crashed with a different autopilot and once the 900Mhz connection died, we couldn't even give it manual control to fly it back.
This all depends on how you have things configured.
Pilot commands can be sent either through an RC TX/RX (usually 2.4 Ghz), or can be sent using a joystick and GCS through the telemetry link (usually 900 Mhz). Falisafe can be configured to occur when RC signal is lost using the throttle failsafe, and/or can be configured to occur when the telemetry link to the GCS is lost. When a failsafe occurs then what happens is also configurable; in "lower modes" such as manual, stabilize, etc the AP will switch to RTL mode, but in upper modes such as "Auto" or "Guided" you can configure the AP to remain in that mode or to switch to RTL upon failsafe.
Failsafe never puts the AP in Stabilize mode.