I haven't had much luck with the CL drivers regardless. The camera works with the included software, but nothing else. It seems to show up as a webcam in various software suites but crashes or does nothing when it's selected. Maybe the drivers are interfaced in a non-standard way and that's why I can't get anything to work, I dunno. Now technically all I need to do is grab a frame and analyze it so I could probably just use api calls to grab it from the cl-eye test, but man that'd be hacky having to keep a window up like that. I'll see if I can find some technical documents that'll help but I'm not super hopeful. I might cludge together an app that does do this just for a proof of concept.
The other cameras might be a better way to go but I am concerned about cost. $50 or less per gun seems reasonable to me if it's a DIY solution since we have commercial solutions on the horizon and the only reason to go a diy route is to save a bit of money. A $25 camera isn't bad on it's own, but to complete a gun you'll need a shell, a laser, an Arduino for the buttons, some misc leds, switches and a relay and solenoid if you want force-feedback. It adds up and I don't want to waste time coming up with a solution that's just as expensive as the commercial products only a bigger pain in the butt to setup and assemble. I'm not ruling any of them out though... they are all good suggestions... I'm just trying to see the forest instead of just the trees for once.