Discussion about general home automation ideas and projects, home automation protocols like Z-wave, Zigbee, Matter, etc, and home automation software and hubs like HomeSeer, Home Assistant, OpenHAB, Homey.
It's been a minute since I was researching this, but from what I remember, Reolink showed up the most for me.
If you can get your hands on older Ubiquiti camera's, G1 and G2 I believe, you can install their NVR software on any server.
Or you could always go the route of using a Raspberry Pi and basically making it from scratch, I know pishop has several camera modules and cases with different features, and if you were fine using WiFi, a Pi Zero would be enough to make it work.
Edit: formatting
Ubiquiti camera’
are the G1 and g2 discontinued? do you know if the new versions are 'smart' (g5)?
When they say AI detection, is it something that requires an internet connection with their cloud?
If you'd like object detection with fully local processing/control, I'd highly recommend looking into Frigate. It uses a Coral TPU (basically a little USB stick that acts as an accelerator for detection) and works extremely well. It also has Home Assistant integration if you're using that. Frigate works with a wide range of cameras and all traffic stays on your local network.
One thing with Reolink, for anyone seeing this, just be sure to get one of the hardwired (for power) cameras. I have a wired Reolink doorbell (which is quite nice) and a solar+battery powered Argus which is practically useless other than as a deterrent. The battery powered devices don't integrate well, no video streams, and have very weak object detection.
Are you willing to do PoE?
absolutely!!