DIRECS Developing Intelligent Robots with Enhanced Capabilities

What?

When visiting this site lot of people may ask  what or who this direcs is. Or who are the people behind this project and who contributes to this? I will try to answer this here.  The acronym direcs was already created in the 1990s for a completely different project. This project was called "Digital Information and Remote Control System" and developed together with Michael Schams. After some years it was replaced by more modern solutions - but the name direcs never died.

Who?

My name is Markus Knapp and I am solely responsible for direcs. I was born in 1971, completed an apprenticeship to "Fernmeldeanlagenelektroniker" (communication facility electronics technician) and another one as "Staatlich geprüfter Technischer Assistent für Informatik" (certified technical assistant for computer science). Today I am working "in IT"  and try to spend most of my free time with my hobby robotics and therefore with this website. My latest project in parallel to this site is a (german only, sorry guys) audio podcast called Robotiklabor.

About 99% of direcs I am doing completely on my own - this means all the hardware construction stuff and the complete software development. I get support from friends who have to listen to my ideas (wanted or not ;-), who advise my in software development sometimes or by hints in forums or by discussing approaches via chat. Al of these people I would like to thank you here for there help and patience.

How?

Any developed hard- or software on this site were developed only as a hobby and you are welcome to use or reuse the source code under the given license as Open Source - please have a look at the GNU license agreement (currently GPL 3).

Donations

As you may can image due to the hundreds if photos and several videos I invested a lot time and money since working in all this stuff since 2005. And by principle this is okay. Everyone who has already done something comparable will understand this.

But obviously my funds are not infinte. All costs for this website, for all materials, meters, cameras, sensors and all other gadgets were buyed and payed by myself. An, believe me, if I had known that before... Well, maybe it is better one does not know this before starting stuff like this. :-)

To make it short: Anyone who like to support this project and help that direcs is able to continue for a long time could do this by sepnding some social mico-money via  Flattr. Please use the corresponding flattr buttons on this site.

Your Markus Knapp