E1 Pro

I know you said you aren't looking for alternatives, but I'd suggest you skip those brands entirely, because what you need/want can't be done with those brands if you are looking specifically for cameras, you will end up with the same issues as your sister or worse. Those 2 brands are garbage and se

Look into a Reolink indoor camera, no subscription required. https://m.reolink.com/us/product/e1-zoom/

i've battled this exact thing with tapo cameras. the issue is usually that the tapo app uses cloud discovery and doesn't play nice with mdns across subnets. try moving the rule order so the allow from home to iot is at the top. also enable igmp snooping on both vlans. if you keep running into proble

For cameras inside your home, my personal preference is to go with plug in power, so I can absolutely disable them when I am at home! Specifically, I plug them into cheap "smart plugs" from a different vendor, plugs with an LED showing the state of the controlled outlet -- that way I hit one button

I like my reolink E1. They have a few versions so check the differences. I think the e1 pro is what I went with. It uses an SD card. You can get alerts for pets or people. It will even track ( rotate) to follow your pet as it moves through the room. No subscription needed. I have their doorbell too.

So I have 5 cameras and a NVR (Network Video Recorder, essentially a 2TB hard drive for the cameras). 4 of the cameras are hardwired to the NVR with POE ethernet and have pan and tilt autotracking, the doorbell uses WiFi and is stationary. I have about a week of 24x7 video storage in 4K and then eac

Reolink E1 Pro is perfect for this, plugs in, records 24/7 to an SD card, and you can toggle continuous recording on/off right from the app. No subscription needed. I use one for a similar situation and it’s been rock solid. Just pop in a 128GB card and you’re set.

For the indoor cameras, I keep them wired into the mains, so there’s no need to recharge them every 6 to 8 weeks. In terms of connectivity they use an internal SD card for recording and you can connect them to your WiFi and your phone. The doorbell camera is wireless, but that one does need charging

This is for pets and I'm guessing you can't drill holes because you are/will be renting as you say, so the best indoor camera for that is going to be a Reolink plugged in Wi-Fi camera. Reolink is the best Wi-Fi camera provider for residential use, IMO. You want plugged in because battery powered cam

If the camera is going inside, the reolink e1 pro would probably do pretty well. It can record to a reolink nvr (obviously), frigate, or you can just put an SD card in it