Josh, I recently purchased a Cisco Wireless-N Internet Home Monitoring Camera. It could be used for your purposes. My use for it is observation of my parrots and maybe to have a live webcam that my friends, also parrot nuts, can observe by invitation. I think you might find it a good product for your purposes. The literature says you can set up several of them and also have them activate via motion sensing. These are not infrared cameras, so some light would be needed to illuminate the area if used at night.

do you mean a regular digital camera that uses a memory card to hold the pics and videos? If so then you can simply remove the memory card from camera and insert it into a memory card reader which you plug into your usb port, if there is not one built into your pc already, then simply choose to copy it to the pc from the card, you don't have to have a program to move pics or vids from the memory card to the pc. Most newer computers have a built in memory card reader, if yours does not you can get one for just a few dollars, I have bought them at big lots for $6 but any store with an electronics dept will have them. That is the easiest way to do it and you don't have to add any extra programs to your pc.

iPod Touch 5th gen looking pretty good. Even has a wrist strap now. 5mp f/2.4 lens and backside illumination for good low-light capability, HDR, LED flash, faee detection, tap-to-focus, 1080p full-HD video with image stabilization, geotagging in wifi areas, 4" ultra-high-res screen, send and receive to anyone, play back on screen or wirelessly to your TV. Oh, it can also download and play music and videos, surf the internet, send and receive texts and emails, and play games And it's light. Great camera that does other stuff too.

Many cameras, when connected with a USB cord to a PC, appear as external drives in Windows Explorer. Find the folder with the media files (often named DCIM or a folder under it) and you can copy the files off onto your PC. Or, with the camera off, remove the SD card and connect it to the PC and do the same thing. Once the files are on the PC, the transfer to the iPad is an iPad question. I think you need to put it into a folder that "syncs" with the iPad using iTunes. Refer to the Apple forums for help if you can't figure it out. This is not a difficult task. Good luck.