Comment Debian + motion + wput (Score 1) 508
I know this is coming late but a standard Debian install with motion and wput installled uses any USB webcamera to record video on motion detection and the upload the best image (or images) to an FTP server. So you can get local video and also back up images offsite. It is so cheap you can have several of these working independently. I used this system to monitor landlord movement at my last place and got most of the place covered with a laptop and a netbook.