For me the human detection isn't an issue. I only have cameras indoors anyway, i have one outside but it's equipped with a highly zoomed lens so it can see the faces of the people in front of my door. It won't trigger on animals because they don't get up that high.
But in your case I could recommend Frigate, it's got decent detection that can be accelerated with a Google coral TPU. It also integrates really well with home assistant, you could use it for the light triggering you mention.
I personally use Shinobi but it's not really great and constantly asking for money. Especially if you want to use the app.
I went through various brands of cameras and the Nest ones were the only ones that I could actually rely on. I didn't spend Megabucks but even mid-range local IP cams were very unreliable for RTSP (randomly going offline, super-sketchy partially translated apps for set up/config, frozen streams etc)
I am not concerned about Google's use of my data. I'm not important enough for anyone to want to spy on me specifically. Of all the cloud solutions/providers, I probably trust Google to have the technical know-how but also the public scrutiny pressure to do a general decent job (way more than some random rebadged Tuya service or something "in-house" thing). By that I mean things like e2e encrypted, there won't be employees with just random read access, decent engineering practices, proper security, SREs for uptime, and won't have default passwords/no passwords on some random world-readable S3 bucket etc.
And even if someone did manage infiltrate Google, they'd very likely target someone high-value before me - I doubt anyone would be able to exfiltrate all the data for practical reasons of where to put it but also someone at Google noticing additional exabytes of suddenly outbound data before getting shutdown. I'm working on the (perhaps flawed) assumption that a successful & undetected Google hack would be short-lived. You'd go for someone rich and powerful first, not video clips of me taking the rubbish out.
Hmm I don't trust Google at all to be honest. I don't even use a Google account on my android phone anymore.
I do have some ring cameras but they're only looking at my front door and I've cut the microphones out of them (they're incredibly sensitive, I could literally hear myself word for word two rooms away).
Most of my cams are TP-Link used in local mode with internet access blocked.
> And even if someone did manage infiltrate Google, they'd very likely target someone high-value before me
The risk isn't just an evil insider infiltrating Google.
It's also that a lot of home security companies are in the business of having a friendly relationship with the authorities. So if the cops were investigating a fender-bender down the street and they ask Google for your videos? Better hope that living room camera doesn't show anything you wouldn't want the cops to see, because it's getting handed over.
But in your case I could recommend Frigate, it's got decent detection that can be accelerated with a Google coral TPU. It also integrates really well with home assistant, you could use it for the light triggering you mention.
I personally use Shinobi but it's not really great and constantly asking for money. Especially if you want to use the app.