I moved into a new place and now my ride has to sleep outside. I was wondering if there was a way to make a web cam record to my hard drive like a security camera. Maybe take a snap shot every .5 sec or so. Anyone done anything like this before?
Would something like This do the job.

 

Something doesn't seem right with that partcular product on ebay. the overall concept seems about right...but i dunno about that camera in the link. first off, you usually get what you pay for. dollar store items might be fun, but chances are they're all crap. but when you have a night vision camera for 2 cents....something aint right. on top of that, the picture was edited by the very sweatshop kids who made the camera, seriously it was made with microsoft paint. third, the 7 day warranty....it takes longer to ship it back to hong kong.

here's a starter list of some programs from download.com

find a decent webcam, night vision depending on if you park under a street light or not. and try out a few surveillance programs to see which suits you best.

 

you can buy an ADT security monitoring device for about $200
It comes with two cameras, and a screen where you can watch whats going on. We recently bought one for where I work for when we have to park overnight on our nightshits since the building owner wanted to be a dick and not put any in. It has plug-ins for VCR's, and also a video mode where you can transfer the camera views onto a regular tv.

 

You will need a video capture card. These can run a few hundred dollars for a good one. They are usually 4-port, though. That means they can support 4 cameras. Also, cameras can range in price from about $130, or so, to several thousand dollars. You definately get what you pay for.

B&W has better sensitivity to light and better resolution than color. I/R illuminators can also be purchased to help out a night-vision camera in pitch blackness, too. If you are only going to install one camera, you should look into a single channel DVR with programming abilities like scheduled recording, motion sensing, etc. With motion sensing selected on a DVR you can get literally weeks of recording on there, providing it's on at least a 20-40 GB drive.