ECT: an introduction

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ECT an introduction

• Stefan Rennick Egglestone
• sre_at_cs.nott.ac.uk
• University of Nottingham

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Computing everywhere

• Plenty of devices are available that allow
  computing to be embedded into the environment
• Digital cameras, mobile phones, MP3 players
• GPS receivers, satellite navigation systems
• PDAs, wireless routers, bluetooth devices
• Phidgets, Motes, Particles, Smart-Its

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Ubicomp installations

• Various projects designing installations
  involving multiple devices
• On Equator
• Ambient Wood (educational activities in a
  woodland setting)
• Uncle Roy (augmented game play across a city)
• Chawlton Park (an interactive installation for
  use by school children)

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Characteristics of installations

• Installations are unique and specific, yet
  created from a set of often very generic devices
• Often involve a diversity of networked devices,
  distributed over a wide area
• Installation-level functionality created by
  combining functionality of these devices

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Difficulties in construction

• Developing software to interact with individual
  devices
• Physical difficulties of installing networking
  infrastructures
• Designing architectures to support the expression
  of installation-level functionality
• Constructing installation-level functionality and
  content

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How can toolkits help?

• Provide generic solutions for common problems
• Helps avoid repetition of effort
• Generic solutions can be better engineered and
  reliable
• Allows installation designers to focus effort on
  installation functionality, rather than on
  installation implementation

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Examples of ubicomp toolkits

• Equator Component Toolkit (the focus of this
  tutorial)
• iStuff/iRos
• ContextToolkit
• Papier mache

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How does ECT help?

• An architecture that has emerged from real
  experiences with installations
• Works on both individual machines and over a
  network
• A set of eighty components used to communicate
  with a variety of devices
• A variety of flexible mechanisms for establishing
  installation behaviour

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ECT component architecture

• Container hosted on every machine
• Locates, advertises, instantiates and manipulates
  components on that machine
• Shared dataspace between all machines in an
  installation
• Any machine in an installation can control a
  component on any other machine in the
  installation

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Container technologies

• Containers can be written in any language that
  can communicate with the dataspace
• Best tested Java container hosting java
  components
• Have also been available C, C, Symbian C
  for mobile phones

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Examples of components

• Device components
• Phidgets, Particles, Smart-Its, Motes
• cameras, iPods, X10, GSM modems
• Software components
• Google Earth, World Wind
• Email, RSS, web, blogs
• Queues, logic gates, association learning

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Specifying behaviour

• Simple GUIs allow users to locate, instantiate
  and control components
• Run on any machine in the installation
• Graph editor connecting components into DAGs
• Component that can interpret scripts
• Scripter writing scripts to specify
  installation-wide behaviour

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Scripting components

• Integration of BeanShell and Processing scripting
  languages for specifying installation behaviour
• Provide a component with a script, and connect
  other components
• Probably the most commonly used components in ECT

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People using ECT

• Researchers at Goldsmiths college
• Installations across multiple homes
• Routing messages to mobile phones
• Researchers at Sussex university
• Simple installations for children
• Control of an augmented room
• The inScape project (?)

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ECT successes

• Up and running for significant periods of time
  (eg 1 week or more without problem)
• Significantly simplified the construction of
  distributed installations
• By providing networking functions
• Scripting allows non-technical individuals to get
  involved in behaviour specification

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Still working on

• Keeping up-to-date with changes to low-level
  device drivers
• Improved GUIs for specifying installation
  behaviours
• Physical configuration editor
• Display editor
• Need more users to help improve further

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Development status

• Stable, and fixing bugs as we find them
• Increasing amounts of documentation on our
  project web-site
• Ongoing funding for supporting users (me!)
• A commitment to expanding implementation to fit
  requirements

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The rest of this tutorial

• Demoing ECT
• Walk-through of project web-pages
• www.equator.ac.uk/technology/ect
• Self-guided exercises for you all to do
• Demos of more advanced features of ECT
• Please feel free to ask questions/make suggestions