With nearly 80 million baby boomers in the United States just reaching their sixties, the demand for senior-oriented devices and services will explode in the coming years. Managing the increasing health-care costs for such a population requires developing technologies that will allow seniors to maintain active, independent lifestyles. Pervasive computing environments, such as smart homes, bundle assistive technologies and specially designed architectural and home furnishing elements provide health-care and well-being services to its residents. However, for such environments to be commercially viable, we require a system that allows technology to be easily utilized and included as it enters the market place. Also we require new technology to be introduced in a plug-and-play fashion, and applications that are developed by programmers, not system integrators. The Gator Tech Smart House, a full-size, free-standing residential home located in the Oak Hammock Retirement Community in Gainesville, Florida, is an exaple of this kind of assistive environment. It uses the Atlas sensor network platform, an enabling technology that combines a hardware platform and software middleware, making the Gator Tech Smart House a truly programmable pervasive computing space. © 2009 Springer-Verlag US.