Again, Sam, all your questions are answered in the OI documentation (on the
IFI web site). Yes, there are four switch inputs on each joystick port. Yes, you can connect LEDs to the LED outputs provided for that purpose on two of the ports.
The "bizarre" string is pointing to a particular bit in the received communication buffer coming from the radio link. That's how the RC gets its data from the OI. Just use the alias and don't worry about the details of
why it works.