In these days all the new netbooks and most laptops have built-in webcam, or at least add one external costs very little, apart from the traditional use in video calls you can use our Linux box to create a monitoring device, it can be used to monitor your child while you are at another PC, or your pet while you are at work, or have a home-made video surveillance system for your properties. To accomplish this we will use the software Motion, the software is present in many distributions, I will give commands using my Ubuntu 10.04. Feature that made me choose this software is the ability to remain ?asleep? until it detects a noise or movement, and then activates and records, plus the ability to define custom actions when it start (send an email, an sms , Etc.).