Ive been wanting some kind of home cameras for ages, and I really dont know what Im doing but I bought this on a whim:
http://www.gearbest.com/ip-cameras/pp_193393.html?wid=3
Chinese IP camera, 720p, two way talk, microSD motion activated recording, IR night vision, android and iphone apps, motion alerts ..... £23 delivered from their EU warehouse!
Its a bit limited with stock firmware (RTSP disabled) but there's custom firmware (http://robinhenniges.com/en/fix-xiaomi-xiaoyi-small-ant) that fixes some basic issues.
I absolutely love it. Budget chinese tech is awesome (even if the apps are sh*t).
Knighty should be along shortly he has done a few installations using these chinese camera setups!
they are always hit and miss... so the saying, buy chinese buy twice can apply.
Have had a few for outside, etc. - some have been great, some of have packed up after a year or gone foggy lens, or the LED's crap out, etc.
Cheap enough to replace - just the hassle of getting the ladders out.
no experience with the IP ones, but I've used a pile of the old fashioned coaxial cable type cameras
I've got a few decent ones for use where quality is needed - enough to get a good picture of someone's face etc.. they're £150 each
but the rest are cheap ebay ones, £12 a time delivered.... and they're pretty good..., picture quality isn't great but they're more than good enough to see what people are doing etc..
they're holding up surprisingly well, i was worried cheap ones wouldn't be waterproof enough (lots of steam + them getting jew washed)... especially after a spider managed to climb into the lense of one... but they're still good
trick was i bought a few different cheap ones, picked the best one then bought more of that one
We've got a foscam that we've used as a "puppycam". Useful for keeping an eye on the dog on the occasions that we don't crate him when we leave, or if you're upstairs and want to see what he's doing "live".
Think it was about £40 or so off of amazon, took a bit of fiddling to get set up (mostly down to the ISP provided router being a bit pants) but have been pleasantly surprised by picture quality and functionality. Freaks the dog and cat out something rotten when you enable the speaker/microphone and tell them to sit.