I'm working on an quasi-autonomous control system for very small fixed wing aircraft. Project is non-commercial and was the hardest thing I could think of to devote my retirement to. This would include airframe design and construction, electronics, and coding - everything.
I had planned to write code and run it in an R/C plane so I could swirtch back to manual if I didn't like what it was doing.
After a lot of thought, I've concluded that this isn't a good idea. The cycle times between flights and likelihood that more than one thing will be wrong would suggest that this sort of program will not cause the work to converge in a positive direction. It would be better to do this in simulation.
So I wonder if any of the relatively inexpensive simulation packages either include or can have added to them, a subroutine which will export "relatively real-time" attitude, heading, altitude, and present position (lat/lon) ??
Best form of output would be serial datastream out a usb port or if not that sent to an ip address.
My plan would then be to have my black-box drive the simulation using the datastream as feedback.
Is there anyway to do this using commercially available software - could be Windows, Linux, or Mac - with preference for Linux.
'Grateful for any ideas or advice on this subject.
John