Positioning engine software
The u-locateEngine software is at the heart of the u-locate indoor positioning solution from u-blox. A positioning engine - the central component in any AoA indoor positioning solution - calculates positions based on angle data received from the anchors. The angle data is derived from the messages broadcast from Bluetooth LE AoA-enabled tags. Sophisticated algorithms and filters calculate the positions to provide accurate, stable, and reliable positions down to 10 cm accuracy. The u-locateEngine software can handle update rates as frequent as 50 times per second. Tags broadcasting payloads of sensor data are passed through to any external systems for further processing. With the built-in support of remote software updates, u-locateEngine can update itself according to a schedule easily determined by the customer. In this way the customer will always have the latest software features and fixes.
u-locateEngine is equipped with an easy-to-understand APIs over MQTT and REST implemented with modern and commonly adopted software components. With this API, clients can consume position data in real-time as well as configure the software runtime. u-locateEngine implements the Location Provider API of the omlox standard, which makes it a great product to include in any omlox compliant architecture without the risk of vendor lock-in.
Anchors and other clients are all authenticated with secure certificates and all data is encrypted, both during transport and at rest. Due to the engine’s efficiency and small size, the software can run easily on limited hardware. u-locateEngine can run together with u-locateHub location middleware on the same local hardware (on-premises) or it can run in a cloud-hosted setup.
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The software is containerized which means that the software is packaged into a single lightweight container that runs consistently on any infrastructure. This enables easy deployment and maintenance and provides scalability if the installation grows. This also allows u-locateEngine to run locally on-premises as well as in the cloud.
u-locateEngine management is supported via the user interface of the u-locateHub product or via the stand-alone support tool s-center 2. It is possible for anyone using the positioning engine to build their own client using the open APIs.
API support | Position data (inbound) | MQTT |
---|---|---|
Position data (outbound) | MQTT, WebSocket | |
Engine configuration (inbound) | REST | |
Anchor configuration (inbound) | REST | |
Runtime events (outbound) | MQTT | |
Features | Position calculation | Yes |
Area management | Yes | |
Anchor management | Yes | |
Events and notifications | Yes | |
Tag filtering | Yes | |
Engine management | Yes | |
Integration | u-locateHub | Live view, configuration |
s-center 2 | Monitoring, configuration | |
Deployment | Container | Docker images |
Operating system | Linux | Yes |
Host architecture | AMD64 | Supported |
Intel 64 | Supported | |
ARMv8-A | Supported |