Not OP, but I _love_ talking about this stuff, so you're stuck with me. :D

I'm a big fan of this project:

https://frigate.video/

It's open source, and you can hook it up to a Coral (or some other things, I think) to get crazy-fast classifications. But CPU is fine for only a few cameras.

Once you get something like that setup, it's just a matter of finding cameras that support RTSP. You get them setup however you like (but preferably wired, with PoE), point Frigate at the RTSP stream, and that's it. Now you've got home security footage that never leaves your house. You can set up a VPN to watch the feeds from elsewhere. Frigate supports MQTT as well, so you can hook it into Home Assistant to get notifications, and even pipe person events into something like Double Take to get face detection:

https://github.com/jakowenko/double-take

EDIT: Oh, and the most important part is to have your security cameras on a totally separate network that doesn't have access to your internal network or the internet. The best cameras are from China, and you don't want to give them any opportunities.

One of my problems is finding reputable good quality cameras that are ideally dumb and just provide an RTSP stream. Of course, I'll throw them on their own VLAN and isolate them from the internet, but I want something with good image quality and ideally doesn't require an app or Windows to setup

Another issue is finding all of these projects and choosing the right ones that'll receive long term support and making sure the pipeline (Camera -> NVR -> Frigate -> ? -> Home Assistant?) doesn't break and stays up to date.

A lot of moving parts, and last time I looked it was hard to find a good NVR with Linux support that also has a decent web app (and even better if it has a native mobile app)

This is my favorite: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07S47VXGY

Ubiquiti's UniFi is an option (of many). They include doorbell cameras nowadays. There's also solutions from Logitech, Eve and others.

You can use Ubiquiti's surveillance software that's part of the UniFi console (that you can manage locally, with no cloud account), or other third party local-only monitoring software such as Synology Surveillance Station, BlueIris, and open source solutions such as iSpy, Frigate, ZoneMinder, and many others.

-- -----

Unrelated to cameras, I've preferred Eve for IoT devices simply because they adopted Thread and Matter very quickly. Nothing of them I have is IP addressable, nor can directly reach the internet. They have nice apps for phones and tablets, but I also use open source software to aggregate everything into my own dashboards (and automation) that I host and manage locally.

My system uses Cloudedge which lets you access the cameras from your phone/computer but instead of saving my data in the cloud I use micro-usb cards. Holds about 10 days of constant recording (128 gig). After that I wipe it and record over it.