The first step is to ensure that your Pi and the associated peripherals are set up.

First, connect your Pi to the internet. This is necessary to ensure that the monitoring program can receive your requests and upload data to Dropbox. I use an ethernet connection to ensure reliability, but a Wi-Fi connection should work fine too, while also having the advantage of improved portability. If you choose Wi-Fi, I'd recommend this USB dongle for the Pi.

Next, connect your webcam to the Pi by plugging it into one of the USB ports. While my Advent webcam's instructions did not explicitly say that it would work with Linux, all I had to do was plug it in and boot up the Pi. No further installation was needed. Other webcams may vary. You can check whether your webcam has been detected by Linux using the following command:

lsusb

In the above image, my webcam is listed as '0c45:6340 Microdia'

Finally, you can connect your DS18B20 temperature sensor to the Pi's GPIO header. I use my breadboard to make the process of creating circuits easier, and I'd recommend you do the same, especially as the DS18B20 requires a 4.7k resistor to be placed between two of its three pins. This link provides a good wiring diagram showing how a breadboard can be used to connect to this temperature sensor.

The next page of the above tutorial also covers the steps needed to read data in from the DS18B20, and shows you how to check that it is working. It is important to perform these setup steps before you can use the DS18B20 for this project. We will also be integrating the sample Python script from the tutorial into our monitoring program, so you may want to have a quick skim over this code.

Please also make note of your DS18B20's unique number. It is the number beginning with '28-' that you come across during the setup tutorial. You will need to enter it into the upcoming Python program to allow it to read in the temperature.