This can be great fun and very functional in many ways. You could use it keep an eye on your house in case of a break-in or maybe you just want to play around with some time lapse movies, or just watch your pets while you are at work.

     Depending on the desired purpose and the hardware/software combination this can get involved. Don't let this scare you though because most of the time it can be done without too much effort. Because this is dealing with video and/or pictures, and potentially a lot of it, older hardware could possibly run into problems with keeping up, but that all depends on if you are doing video, or just still pictures from the webcam. It would also depend on the resolution of the pictures or video you are working with as well. Another determining factor is how many cameras you have set up, or even what kind of cameras they are.

     As I am sure you could guess though, generally speaking, the more cameras you have hooked up, the faster your computer would need to be, and the bigger your harddrive might need to be. Because this is dealing with hardware, you will need to consult the system requirements for the camera you choose, but even some of the older hardware is capable of doing this, especially if you just have one camera snapping a picture on an interval or something like that.

     Use these links for what you will need.