ECT is a distributed infrastructure that allows a number of components to be interconnected through a shared dataspace.The key to our approach has been the development of a lightweight component toolkit which allows a number of different hardware and software systems to be interconnected and rapidly configured. A key driver for us is supporting dynamic ubiquitous environments where the arrangement of devices can be continually revised to meet the needs of users. Consequently, we have developed a general component framework to allow us to manage the lifecycle of components – from their initial instantiation within the space to their eventual demise. The toolkit considers a ubicomp application or experience to be realized as a dynamically interconnected and potentially time-varying collection of hardware and software components, distributed across a number of machines.Each component interface is represented as a set of dynamic properties that act as either input to the component or output from the component. Component properties may be linked together allowing us to combine a range of ubiqutous computing technologies including sensors, displays and simple scripting components. The toolkit allows components to be instantiated across a number of machines and provides a lightweight component lifecycle model. Components have been developed for many of the existing ubiqutous computing technologies. The infrastructure also provides facilities to allow users to extend this set of components set of components. ECT has been implemented using EQUIP. The homepage for ECT (and EQUIP) is here. |