Thank you for your response wwbrown. Agreed, we also think that the speed of the laser module needs to be improved, and that is in fact the next objective we plan to look at for this project. We do have a few tricks we'd like to try, to see how far we can push the unit speed-wise. We understand that would sacrifice the maximum range of the unit (currently 40m), but in this case we believe that is a perfectly acceptable trade-off.
I'll be sure to post our methods and results here as soon as we have something.
Let me just add that we plan on taking small steps in this project, documenting each step in these forums as we go. So please keep an eye out for many more, hopefully, exciting progress posts! 