We report on a system architecture, SEArch, and its associated methods and tools we have been developing, testing, and extending for several years through a number of innovation processes in the field of Smart Environments. We have developed these infrastructure in a bottom-up fashion directed by the needs of the different projects as opposed to an ideal one which projects have to conform to. In this sense is practical and although necessarily incomplete, it has significant versatility and reasonable efficiency. Projects developed using this architecture have been funded by different companies and funding bodies in Europe. The different components of the architecture are explained through the software supporting those aspects of the system and through the functionality they exhibit in different practical scenarios, extracted from some of the projects implemented with SEArch.