Are there any alarm system panels, control boxes, etc. that have a kind of API for software to access

I am basically looking to build an advanced alarm system for my home. I have previously used FrontPoint Security which offers a service through alarm.com. This basically gives me access to arming and disarming remotely and the ability to watch surveillance cameras remotely. It's pretty neat, but I want to take my system a step further.

Since I don't own the equipment and am just leasing it, I have no problem getting all new equipment.

What I want to do is set up a 32 IP camera system for the exterior, interior, and driveway. However, I want to know if one of the cameras goes offline and I want it to trip an alarm or at least put the system into a trouble state. I have not seen any control panel that has capabilities for putting cameras into the loop.

Since I already will be planning on taking the video from the cameras and streaming it in real-time to a remote computer for archival, I will be able to detect if a line goes dead. I would like to be able to interface the control panel with a piece of software I will build that allows me to programmatically trip the alarm or change the panel's state to trouble.

Of course the best option for this would be some web interface that lets me trip the alarm remotely and then the alarm company notifies the box that there is an alarm, similar to if a cellular device on the alarm system stops reporting back to the monitoring center.

So far my only thought has been to make a device that interfaces with the alarm system like any other alarm device, like a door sensor or motion sensor, and hard wire it into the panel and then simply break the circuit when the device receives a signal from the camera video processing computer. But this seems more complicated than it should be.

I'd prefer a control panel that has a cellular transceiver option that acts as a failover for if the phone line goes down. One of the GE panels I used in the past had such a feature.

I've tossed this on DIY because I don't know of any system that does this and am not tweaking any equipment as of yet, so it's not quite a programming question or an electrical engineering question.

If any of you folks have heard of such a flexible control panel, I'd love to know.