About

Dirk Jensen is an IT systems administrator based in North Frisia, Germany. His career in IT and digital media spans more than three decades, beginning in the early 1990s with a long focus on content management and online services at a local savings bank in Bredstedt, where he worked for over twenty years. He later formalised that background with training in web development (2015) and a series of Microsoft certifications (MCP, MCSA and MCSE).

His work with networked cameras runs almost as long. Around 2001, the first webcam on the market square in Bredstedt was operated by an external service provider on behalf of the local savings bank; Dirk provided its technical support. From 2004 the project continued under his hand, and in 2013 he took it into private operation — the same Bredstedt market-square camera that was later cited as a data source in a master’s thesis on machine-learning-based human action recognition. Over the years it moved from still images to live streaming, and through a wide range of hardware: Canon DSLR rigs driven by Raspberry Pi, Mobotix, Dahua, Avigilon and Hikvision units — before he settled on Axis. He ran it until 2021.

Since 2017 he has built and maintained the harbour webcam at Schlüttsiel, again working through many camera systems before arriving at Axis, up to 4K models. It streams continuously to the public and today runs on Everstra Live, Overlay and Capture.

Everstra grew directly out of this hands-on experience: tools built for his own cameras, refined over years of real operation, and now shared as free software. It reflects that background — practical, fair, and built by someone who uses it himself every day. More on the reasoning behind those choices.