Thank you for the suggestion regarding the hardware. Two follow-up questions:

1. Would you mind letting me know the model of the camera you’re using?
2. Blue Iris sounds awesome! But it also sounds like quite a bit of compute is required to run it. Is that true? Or could I also run in on a RPi, maybe even with Coral AI stick?

So what I get from this is the following:

• definately no Ring, etc. products that save videos feeds in the cloud
• use RPis running an open source software as a “backend” for the cameras (in the best case this records continuously, and deleting everything older than 5-10 minutes, or records on movement)
• aim for full coverage with cameras
• if everything runs locally only, VPN is required to get live feed if something triggers

Do you also happend to have any suggestions regarding software and hardware? I’m not sure if relevant, but I’m in Germany, so cameras like Wyze V2 (which can run RTSP software, iirc), might not be available…

Yes, I actually thought about that as well. However, it does seem to be a bit more “intrusive” regarding laying cables, don’t you think? Also, I would imagine this to be a lot more expensive, but I might be wrong…