u-center 2 is the u-blox evaluation tool to test and evaluate u-blox GNSS receiver performance. u-center 2 includes the capability to test u-blox location services and it has been recently re-designed to support the Plug&Play experience for AssistNow Live Orbits and Predictive Orbits.
When designing the production Firmware, there are a set of implementations to be done to get access to the service and use the A-GNSS delivered data; with the Plug&Play mode, developers can immediately focus on the service benefit, easily testing different environment and service configuration, without any additional pre-setting to get access to the service.
Just connect the Evaluation Kit to u-center 2, open the AssistNow service tab and play with the different service variants. You can thus verify the benefits to position fix time provided by the Predictive Orbits option and even more the enhanced accuracy and super fast position fix time using the Live Orbit variant.
You can appreciate which is the benefit for your application replicating different scenarios without being yet an expert of u-blox GNSS receiver. For initial evaluation, no coding, no documentation reading, is needed. And neither signing-up to u-blox Thingstream service delivery platform. It's just Plug & Play.
Note: the u-center 2 version that supports the new service release will be available on June 14th 2025.
Getting started with an Evaluation Kit
To get started few simple steps are required:
- Get your desired Evaluation Kit (EVK) from the u-blox Product selector or from your proper u-blox Sales interface
- Download u-center 2 and open the tool
- Connect the EVK to the laptop using the USB cable provided in the box and add the EVK to u-center 2 clicking in the Data Sources icon
on top left corner; click then the + icon and select the proper interface from the drop down menu
- In the Tools and Services section, select AssistNow; you are now ready for your evaluation
You can select the Predictive Orbits or the Live Orbits panel and chose the default settings or customize them using the user interface. To get the selected A-GNSS data from AssistNow click the Download and Transfer button to automatically Download the A-GNSS data from AssistNow service and transfer data to the GNSS receiver.
For more information about each of the available options you can read the u-center 2 guide accessible from the tool.
You are suggested to repeat the test multiple times in different configurations and especially compare the Time to fix the position (Time-To-First-Fix) and the accuracy of the firsts positions in following different setups, every time performing a Cold start:
- without using AssistNow service (just exit from AssistNow panel and perform a Cold restart)
- using Predictive Orbits variant
- using Live Orbits variant
Getting started without an Evaluation Kit
If you do not have an Evaluation Kit but your laptop is connected directly to your device with a u-blox GNSS chip/module inside, the steps 2,3 described above are still valid. But you need some extra steps to connect the device to the AssistNow service.
- Create an Evaluation AssistNow Device Profile as described in the AssistNow device registration guide and copy the ZTP token
- Proceed in u-center 2 as described in step 4 and paste the ZTP token in the field ZTP Device Profile Token and connect to the service using the Register button
Now you are ready to proceed with the evaluation and testing using you own device and compare the performance with different set-up.
Service query string
The User Interface includes a read-only field with the service query string that changes accordingly to the settings. This represents the https service request that you need to implement in the Firmware of the device as described in the Service Integration and Host Software guides