This is more a Showerthoght than an actual “Arduino pill” and it’s about HID vs DCS-BIOS. It’s potentially a quite long discussion but I will keep it as short as possible by pointing out the factor that, in my opinion, is the most important: flexibility.
By using HID (Human Interface Device) your control box is “seen” by the PC as any other game controller, allowing it to be used with almost any game (I managed to fly my ships in Star Citizen via the UFC, for instance). DCS-BIOS-based controllers instead use a bus to communicate with DCS and they work on just one module (not entirely true, see below). Therefore, if your intention is to use your Control Boxes with multiple games and modules then HID is probably your best option. It must be noted thought that HID is not supported by every Arduino board (at the moment) so if you need a specific feature not provided by Arduino Leonardo or similar, well, that can be a problem.
DCS-BIOS on the other hand provides an impressive interface between your device and DCS. By using DCS-BIOS you have access to the status of most of the avionics (in the form of numerical values), then what do to with those values is entirely up to the coder. For instance, I use DCS-BIOS to interface my TFT (Arduino Uno). A fellow 132nd Virtual Wing friend uses DCS-BIOS to bring the idea of building Control Boxes to next level. Have a look!
A quick note about DCS-BIOS and multiple modules: I did some tests and my TFT worked both for the Ka-50 and the Mi-8 at the same time. I implemented a number of checks in order to understand which module was running (reading a certain variable, for instance) and then by running only the routines needed for that particular module.
Unfortunately I later scrapped the Mi-8 code because I was running out of memory..
FlyAndWire 