Yes, or some auto metering. It's not that complicated.
It's not complicated until you try it. I tried it, and had to give up.
Find anyone that has done it, and published his results, and you will solve a problem that has been bugging me since months.
Long timelapses made in RAW? there is no space on SD card.
I totally disagree. A 16GB card can store more than 1K raws.
I am already doing timelapses with more than 1.000 frames with CHDK.
That's not what a I call a long timelapse, I am thinking of something like 10.000 frames.
Besides, for long time lapses, the raw to JPG conversion speed is not important, and there are algorithms that can do it pretty well.
Well, first you say conversion shouldn't be there, then you realize conversion should be there.
First you say metering shouldn't be there, then you realize metering should be there.
As I said before, list the features you would find acceptable to lose.
This can become a clear project to speak about.
You see, most of these "useless" features are important and required by each other. Take one away, and the camera becomes much much less useful.
As I was saying, you can still use the regular camera firmware, no?
I think it would be feasable (read: a few thousands of hours of work) to boot the camera with an OS that does basic I/O (SD, keys, display). In this case you have downgraded the camera to a very small computer.
But then, every other function must be coded.
You CANNOT call "fragments" of the original firmware without giving full control to the original software to do the start-up, like CHDK does.
Depends. Say you want to take a time lapse capture of a birds nest in a tree. Have fun putting 4 car batteries there.
Ehm... a long wire?
This is becoming surreal :-)
You see, I have started indeed working on a cabinet with two "hot-swappable" motorbyke batteries to indefinitely power a camera for very long-time timelapses. A project like your would give me less features, not more features.