Tom bought a cheap ($20) digital camera in hopes to use if for a good alternative to a webcam, which generally takes poor pictures in full sun. The camera comes with a usb cable so I just tried to plug it in.

tail -f /var/log/messages
saw usb device registered, but not dev node assigned (not usb-storage support or video4linux support)
search internet for "linux vivicam 55"
found linux support with gphoto2 (command line interface to libgphoto)
gphoto2 --auto-detect
detected as

Model                          Port
----------------------------------------------------------
Che-Ez Snap SNAP-U             usb:

gphoto2 -a (since there is only one camera)

Abilities for camera             : Che-Ez Snap SNAP-U                          
Serial port support              : no
USB support                      : yes
Capture choices                  :
                                 : Capture not supported by the driver
Configuration support            : no
Delete selected files on camera  : no
Delete all files on camera       : no
File preview (thumbnail) support : yes
File upload support              : no

so it looks like the camera might not be the right choice. it looks like we won't be able to use scripts to capture images or video from the camera because the camera doesn't seem to support capture through the software interface. sorry tom :-(