Seriously… how hard is it to setup an RPi with a camera and offload the detection to some open source software? Last time I checked there projects performing animal, face and even license plates reckon, extraction and db recording of “who”, “when”, “what” using cheap cameras and an RPi.

It's actually pretty darn easy nowadays and i'm so glad its the case! Frigate is amazing and the detection package is of your choosing (hardware dependant) and everything is customizable too.

Frigate is pretty cool if you need motion detection. If you don't it's a bit wasteful because it still keeps the whole decoding pipeline active. I've switched to LightNVR that doesn't do that. I have enough alarm sensors (motion and door entry) so I don't need motion on the cams as well. I just record 24/7 for evidence keeping.