RASPBERRY PI and Autopilots

 I have made some good progress on putting together this experiment.  I am using a small computer called a Raspberry Pi to see if I could cobble something that could read NMEA serial data and in turn activate a servo to imitate the heading indicator air gap capacitor.  So far the following has been accomplished:

• Boots up and operates
• Can compile and execute C code
• Wrote the low level serial port interface
• Read data from the Garmin simulator 
• Parse the strings
• Calculate the desired course and the current track
• Calculate a course that will intercept the current track
• Calculate a position for a 180 degree servo that would turn the aircraft accordingly
• Hooked up a PWM controller for LED and servos
• Blinked an LED and turned a servo motor

The next steps are:

• Figure out how to read a button and de-bounce it properly
• Set up the state space machine for various modes
• Read and write configuration files
• Write out a log file
• Prepare a status light for reading data
• Split the status into one for minimum navigation and position

I made a thing!