Building a UAS Ground Station and could use some advice

Hello,

My name is Hunter and I'm an engineer that is currently designing a new project. Partially hobby and partially future business opportunity.

I am designing a small UAS system that is based off of a normal R/C aircraft but incorporates a state-of-the-art ground station used for flight control, camera control, telemetry links, and monitoring software. Its pretty much a flight simulator but using a small aircraft.

I do not have the space for realistic flight controls since this will be a pelican case-based station, nor do I need all the buttons and gismos that commercial flight sticks offer. I am looking to use a 3-axis Hall effect industrial joystick with a few switches and buttons for the flight control coupled with three thumb wheels for trim, a smaller two-axis positioning joystick for the camera control, and a 1-axis throttle assembly with thumb wheel trim. All of these are going to be used on a 12-bit USB joystick controller board (which are out of stock at the moment) and interfaced with a miniature PC.

Here are my issues:
Is the 12-bit controller board listed on http://www.leobodnar.com/products/BU0836A/, the only one available for purchase?

Is splicing the thumb wheels into the appropriate axis of the joystick the best way to setup trim wheels?

Thanks in advance for any assistance given!

Happy Flying!

-Hunter