Can Ardupilot use magnetic heading vice GPS

I am interested in using the ArduPilot on an autonomous surface marine vehicle to control the rudder. The vehicle control system is predicated on having the vehicle's bow (front) pointed in a steady direction; not on having the vehicle make a specific course over the ground. The vehicle has a flux-gate electronic magnetic compass that provides NMEA data on heading. What would be required to modify the code to replace the GPS heading with heading from the compass?Thanks
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  • 3D Robotics
    Sure, that's very possible. It would require some changes in the NMEA parser and navigation routines, but nothing that an afternoon of coding can't solve. I don't have any specific advice, since we've never done what you suggest, but the code is pretty well commented and there are no technical barriers that I can think of to do this.
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