Robust object detection and low computational effort are two key issues, which have to be addressed when Electrical Capacitance Tomography (ECT) is applied in the field of mobile applications. In this paper we present an object detection technique in combination with an artefact reduced fast reconstruction algorithm. The approach achieves a high object detection rate in the vicinity and center of the sensor front end. The proposed light-weight signal processing chain is the key to integrate this sensing technology on a platform limited in terms of space, energy and computational resources.