A 96 well plate reader

So I just received a fellowship for building a biosensor, The Chromochord. The old version of the Chromochord had a lag problem in that it took a certain amount of time to scan and read the optical spectrum of each well. I want to do this all at once and have so far come on to two solutions. One is to make a sensor for each well using photodiodes. The other is to use a camera or CCD of some sort. There are definitely ways I can do these things without making the device broadly applicable but that is not what I want. I want people to be able to use a device such as this without having to modify it much or at all. I really really don't want to use diffraction grating spectroscopy. Good lord is that stuff pitiful but I just might have to suck it up and do it. Anyone know much about using cameras in extremely low light?