alt Hacker NewsI took a few lab courses in the university (for Physics), it's never that easy.
How do you keep it in place? A wood mount? A 3D printed piece? A metal support may be an overkill. Does it need screws for alignment? I guess 3, but I'm not sure if they are necessary. Can I buy the sensor alone or I have to remove a lens? Do you have a strong opinion about sensors? Like one for beginners and one for intermediate level. Wires? I still have nightmares about BNC wires that magically stop working. How much light isolation? Do I have to paint everything in black? (While using a microscope in a completely dark room to take photos, someone opened the door and the light ruined one or two of the slides, we notice that a few days later.)
Each one here has a different set of expertise, so if you want to run the experiment and write a nice post with photos you can farm some karma. Otherwise, you can just comment that is also useful.
Even if you ignore all the issues you mentioned and physically mount the sensor with a bunch of blue tack in a dim environment you will be able to get a much better picture than the article. Next step would be 3d printing a case/mount. There really isn't much more to it.
PS: you can buy a sensor with a USB2 cable attached to it, which works flawlessly in Linux.