2018-05-13 So after a very exhaustive search of USB capable image sensors I've pretty much given up.

Things I've looked into to date:

So I've been very impressed with the On-Semi MIPI CSI-2 interface sensors such as the MT9M114. My original plan was to design a tiny circuit board around on of their sensors. But after a very exhaustive search I was unable to find anything that can convert that data to motion-JPEG and put it on the USB. There is a very large and expensive chip made by cypress called the Cypress EZ-USB® CX3 which looks very cool, but is way more than this project requires.

Additionally I looked into several 12 bit parallel interface sensors such as the AR0130CSSC00SPBA0-DP1, with the plan being to use a realtec usb 2.0 camera controller. Unfortunately I do not believe these are available to the public and I do no want to invest the time into a design with almost no support. It's difficult to find datasheets for these devices. An example being the RTS5822 if anyone has additional information about these devices, please let me know.

I have looked into using a raspberry pi zero as an IP camera with a MIPI camera, such as the MT9M114 and a tiny pcb. Unfortunately the IP stream appears as though it may be delayed by several milliseconds. However I need to do some experimentation to confirm this. (The latency maybe extremely low in real terms, just requiring some optimization)

What I'd really like to do is set up a raspberry pi zero as a USB camera device per this guide and stream the data from a MIPI camera through the USB: https://learn.adafruit.com/turning-your-raspberry-pi-zero-into-a-usb-gadget?view=all#other-modules

If anyone would like to take on this project I'd love to help out. But in the meantime I believe we're going to be stuck with the c270