I am looking for a WiFi camera that:
A topic I have some expertise in. You should not be thinking in terms of a "camera" but in terms of designing the system as a whole.
>> 1) It will connect to my home network just like my WiFi/ethernet home printers
All IP cameras will connect to your home network but if the purpose is security then wifi is a bad choice because it is trivially easy to disrupt.
>> 2) I will be able to connect to it and send it commands
Obviously, that is the purpose of having it on the network.
>> 3) It will send the video feeds to a server of my choice, in my case, inside the same network - I will have a PC running a "camera server" app.
Not really necessary or a good idea. That is the purpose and function of an
NVR (Network Video Recorder) which records and manages all this. It generates the "quadrant video" etc. It is a small box, like a router, more stable than a computer, uses much less energy, etc. Also note that hard disks for NVRs are not regular computer hard disks but are
optimized for continuous recording.
4) I will be able to connect to this server and download videos etc.
Yes, that is what the NVR does. In my case I have four cameras and it stores about two months of video before it starts over-writing.
5) It will not be infested with backdoors etc, it will not try to access the internet or send messages to any remote server which I have not explicitly set up
Difficult to impossible. You can set up your security cams on a LAN not connected to the Internet but then you will not have access from the Internet, only from LAN. If you want to connect from the internet the cameras need to connect and log in to servers which facilitate the connection. In other words, my client connects to the server and asks if camera with ID XXXXX is online, then the server responds with the IP and other parameters so a direct connection can be established. Given this it would be difficult to control any other leaks from the cameras.
Most cameras are full of holes and vulnerabilities. I just live with it but sometimes cameras have been infected and made BOTs. It is not an easy issue to resolve. Several workarounds can be devised but it can get complicated.
My cams are made by Xiongmai and are very definitely compromised, infected and worthless but I use them anyway. I know they have default master passwords and it is easy to log into them. There are many videos in Youtube of people hacking cameras and scaring homeowners.
My cameras are all showing the outside of the house and I don't really care if anybody can see what's going on. I guess it would be worse if they were compromised as BOTs.
https://www.pcworld.com/article/3134039/chinese-firm-admits-its-hacked-products-were-behind-fridays-massive-ddos-attack.html Another issue is what type of camera to choose for each location. There are many different features.
I bought all my cameras, NVR, etc. from ebay and it cost me very little.