[Q] Tegra3 camera hal problems topic

I'm trying to compile Android 4.2.2 for the Lenovo A2109A. AOSP 4.1.2 mostly worked out fine, except that panorama mode for the camera didn't work. In AOSP 4.2.2 the camera HAL didn't seem to connect to the camera, so I switched to CM-10.1. Camera HAL loads fine, but it doesn't take pictures. The problem seems to be that the stock camera HAL is linked to a version of libjpeg with proprietary additions from nvidia and I can't figure out what they are. Someone else was able to successfully compile CM-10.1 with a working camera by using libjpeg-turbo for compilation (see here), but it also needs a patch for skia that I can't find.

So right now I'm basically stuck and I'm looking for different ways forward. I could really use your advice. Should it be possible to use the camera hal from a related device instead? I know that the nexus 7 is also a tegra3 device, and very close to A2109. It does use different camera devices, but these can be configured in nvcamera.conf. I used strings to find whether any proprietary lib referenced the specific cameras and I found only one, libnvodm_imager.so. The most important appear to be in the kernel source, in the following files:
drivers/media/video/tegra/tegra_camera.c
drivers/media/video/tegra/tegra_dtv.c

My question--to what extent should it be possible to just use the grouper tegra camera files for the kernel and then use the grouper camera HAL? Or do you have a different suggestion for me to proceed? I'm asking because I can hardly code. I am, however, getting better and better with git and patches, and I did manage to fix two compile issues in the lenovo kernel source.

My kernel source is over here. My device tree is over here (defaults to aosp 4.2.2 branch, cm-10.1 is a different branch). Grouper kernel sources are over here.