ECT: a toolkit to support rapid construction of ubicomp environments

Abstract.We describe the motivation, design and initial implementation of the Equip Component Toolkit (ECT), a software toolkit for ubiquitous computing that is intended,to reduce,the cost – especially in time,and effort – of developing ubicomp installations, applications and environments, and increase the potential involvement,of designers and users in this process. The toolkit supports distributed applications running over multiple hosts by the creation, configuration and ,interconnection ,of software ,components ,(especially existing/legacy components),and components ,which ,represent physical devices and sensors. Users are supported,by graphical tools which provide various representations of the running environment, plus facilities for monitoring, (re)configuration, scripting and learning by example.