Use arupilot for real aerial photography

Hi there!

Sorry if this topic already exists but I’ve not found something similar.

Im working on a research where Im going to fly my real airplane to take some aerial pictures. I usually fly drones equiped with cameras to do photogrammetry jobs, but now I want to do the same with my manned airplane:

I would like to mount an ardupilot on my plane just to follow the plan created with the mission planner grid and to shutter the camera, but I don’t know how to do that, due the ardupilot will not fly on auto or other flight mode because I will fly my manned plane.

The point is that I’ve no idea about how to command the ardupilot to start the mission and take the pictures.

Any help?

By the way sorry about my bad english…

I don’t think you can expect to “fly” an auto mission with a ride-along autopilot, but I bet a Lua script could be crafted such that the camera would be triggered within a small radius of any given waypoint.