Shutter, that's an interesting idea. Can you explain why you are going with the sparkfun sensor? There are some advantages like small size and 15 fps, but you could get an better sensor with a pretty small size if you were willing to hack apart a $50-$80 point and shoot camera. If you choose a Cannon Powershot you could customize it with CHDK.
I can completely understand if you want to use the sparkfun sensor because it's cool, but I'm wondering if you see some advantage to it that I am missing.
By the way, my camera has been running for the past few weeks outside and is still functioning great without any intervention.