Motion and a low-cost home surveillance system

I have this Creative Live webcam from years ago. While it works perfectly well, its resolution is no better than my iPhone 3Gs…

So, rather than throwing it away or let it sit around idle, I connected it into the Ubuntu server, installed the “motion”package and turned it into a low-cost web surveillance system…

As you shall see, it is a straight-forward procedure:

1. On the Ubuntu server, to install motion, enter:

# apt-get install motion

2. Configure "motion.conf" file to enable remote access (web browser):

File: /etc/motion/motion.conf

# Restrict webcam connections to localhost only (default: on)

webcam_localhost off

# Restrict control connections to localhost only (default: on)

control_localhost off

3. Lastly, restart “motion” daemon:

/etc/init.d/motion restart

The webcam’s image should be available through the url “http://:8081”