I have used MindVision gigabit cameras, I believe they have some POE models (but they are mostly indoor-industrial-machine-vision. They do have a Linux SDK (basically a .so and a Python wrapper for the .so).
I'm going to look at all the links in the comments in this post to see if I can find things which are: better documented, more affordable, and easier to integrate.
I'm going to look at all the links in the comments in this post to see if I can find things which are: better documented, more affordable, and easier to integrate.