Are there any alternatives that would meet those requirements?
Using Home Assistant[0], you can use the motion detection found in many IP cameras to trigger various events[1]. This includes recording video or sending you notifications[2] about it so you can watch it live. If you don't have motion detection in your camera, you can buy a motion detection module for about $10.
The cost of setup is the price of the camera and a machine (such as an R.Pi) to run Home Assistant on, or perhaps a Zigbee base station as well (about ~$30) depending on what you want to do.
I had a fairly decent-sized setup, including sensors on every door and window, temperature/pressure/humidity sensors in every room + outside, every single lightbulb (exc. bathrooms) was RGB and network connected, as well as light and motion sensors across different parts of my house. I had wireless buttons connected that would do various things depending on how they're interacted with and an IR-emitter that I eventually used to start programming my fan and to interact with my TV.
I think I spent about $200 in total on all of it.
[0] https://www.home-assistant.io/
You don't have to use YAML? :-)
Turns out I don’t like staring at a camera every time I come and go. And it’s obviously intentional it’s a cloud only product for a reason, they absolutely could do local storage but the model is mining and storage.
Took me about 3 days to figure out this was a bad purchase.
I don’t understand the difference. It appears you are just trading AWS for Tyco / Johnson Controls cloud.