There is a sidwalk about 6 to 8 feet in front of the building.
The window cam is designed for that, but most of the cams work fine through windows if you disable the IR and status lights.
The battery cams will not work as they rely on infrared for motion detection and that won’t pass through glass (unless you don’t care about motion detection and just want continuous recording, but I’m guessing you want the detection feature).
The wired cams can also be run out the bottom of a double hung window and it will close fine, the cable is flat. That’s how mine are set up.
A 2nd floor window at 6 to 8 feet will not be as good quality as something closer but it should be usable. I have one mounted on the 2nd floor (actually closer to a 3rd floor since my basement is half exposed) and it can see pretty well even across the street. That’s a 1080P model, the 4k Panv4 or even the 2K Camv4 would be a bit clearer, but not a ton since they use higher compression on those models.
The OG Telephoto is an option (3x optical zoom built in) but that will give a pretty narrow field of view at that distance. Perhaps 2 or 3 of them if you want better detail and a wide coverage area. Not sure if they’re back in stock anywhere yet.
I have a Wyze Cam v3 aimed through a double pane window on the 2nd floor of my house. I saved this video of a random car turning around in my driveway for discussions like this. My sidewalk is about 20 feet from my house.
This v3 is sitting on the inside window sill touching the glass.
I use something like this. 8 feet from the building is pretty close. maybe if you put the camera as high as possible.
Wyze also makes a window camera but i have not used one.
I only need to see the sidewalk, which is close to the building. And don’t need great resolution. Would it work for that?
The window cam is probably the easiest, but if you don’t want it mounted to the window, go for a Camv4