wavering

I am a computer programmer by background but I know nothing about CCTV (and I do mean nothing - I had to do a web search to find out what DVR meant) This is what I want to do (as simply as possible - I have no wish to re-invent the wheel): Have a number (possibly up to eight) very high quality colour CCTV cameras controlled via wireless link from software I will write in vb.net running on my PC. I want to be able send a signal from my software to any camera at any time to take a picture and transmit it back to my PC. In many ways this will look like a home security system but it is not - it is actually part of an AI project I may need anywhere from one picture per day up to say 20 per second but the most likely rate is about 5 frames per second (yes, this will fill my disk drive pretty quickly) It would also be useful to be able to adjust the size/quality of each picture ie number of bytes of data in the resulting image, on the fly. Quality is more important than price but like anybody, I don't want to spend money needlessly. I am based in the UK So, can anybody suggest a camera (ideally of external quality) and associated hardware and APIs that can do this? Many thanks ...