At the present time,most laptops and netbooks have built-in webcam,with that you can use a software in Ubuntu called Motion to create a monitoring system to monitor kids while you are at work,or have a home-made surveillance.

To install Motion in Ubuntu is very easy,just open up a teminal window from Applications->Accessories menu,and run this command:

sudo aptitude install motion

Then open the configuration file with your favourite editor,and activate motion in daemon mode,change the image resolution,adjust the brightness, contrast and saturation,etc.. (Read the original post to do these configurations)

sudo gedit /etc/motion/motion.conf

After that save the file, and add to our username the group motion:

adduser USER motion

Note that you can remove motion from autostart at login with this command:

update-rc.d -f motion remove

From now on we will decide when to start motion and video surveillance, with a simple terminal command as simple user: motion
When the daemon is started, the management of motion can be made through web interface. Open your browser and point to this address:

http://localhost:8080

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