PoE is awesome. My custom home security system is all CCTV PoE with a gstreamer backend running on four-core fanless linux box. Way to go. Complete control. No batteries, no wares spying on me, no personal data getting scraped by big guys. (Cloud connectivity sucks because I have segmented mp4s and jogging through them hurts but I only care for events after they happen, not while they happen.)
Got any recommendations on what cameras to get? The market is absolutely flooded with cheap shitty cloud-connected all-in-one cameras making it hard to find good, simple products.
I got a lot of 6 Axis cameras from eBay, it was around $200. I think they took them off a school or something but they were in great shape. They look great and have no spyware etc because it’s an industrial company. I recommend getting some industrial surplus because they tend not to have all the bloatware and have significantly better weatherproofing, casing, etc, even if the optics are the same as the consumer units.
I was under the impression that most commercial/industrial cameras all required some kind of proprietary ecosystem of peripherals and controllers. Do those work with open source DVR solutions like frigate? (If so, did you know that before you bought them?)