Can a PixHawk work in a real airplane?

@CharliEcho wrote:

Greetings everyone. Noob alert!! I'm new to this forum and VERY new to this subject matter so please forgive my lack of knowledge. Feels right now like I am drinking from a fire hose and getting older doesn't seem to help either . My expertise with R/C aircraft ended shortly after college (30+ years ago!) but my love and fascination with airplanes and flying never has. I'm a tinkerer at heart and over the years have built and flown 2 experimental airplanes. I love the innovation spirit that is present within the Experimental Aircraft community which is also very obviously present within your ArduPilot.org group. Very cool and interesting stuff!! Unfortunately some of it is way above my head right now.

I'll try to briefly explain what I'm trying to accomplish. I've attached 2 servos to small trim tabs along the trailing edges of one aileron and the elevator. The tabs have enough authority to control pitch and roll but I have plenty of authority with the normal flight controls to override any undesirable inputs( plus I can kill power to the servos as a safety feature as well). I've invested some time writing my own software (self taught programmer) to drive the servos with good results in the pitch axis, not so much on the roll axis. So I'm trying to go about this in a different direction now.

Q1: Can I hook up a PixHawk to make it work? Will it work under the vibrations of a real airframe?

Q2: I don't understand the system well enough but I would like to not have to have a transmitter involved. How else could I command the autopilot pitch/roll in real time?

Q3: I would like more functionality that a wing leveler. Ideally I would like to be able to tell the PixHawk to fly a heading or a course to a waypoint (lat/lon) plus give it commands to climb descent to a given altitude. Can that be done real time via a serial port or only through the Mission Planner? Any other options?

FYI: I have a Lenovo ThinkCentre M73 running Win7 installed in the airplane running and EFIS program that I've cobbled up over the years.

I hope this topic isn't out of bounds in your forum but if it is I understand. TIA for your help/inputs.

Cheers,

Carlos

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