Another big Nightly update is available.
Since my last post about the performance improvements, I’ve mostly been working on making VCE easier to set up, easier to use, and more tolerant of real-world configurations that have accumulated over several releases.
The biggest addition is a completely redesigned setup and migration wizard. It handles new installations, older VCE installations, and legacy XML playlists in one guided process. It shows what will happen before making changes, keeps the old installation untouched, and gives you a readable report when it finishes.
Alias management has also received a major upgrade.
You can now import and export complete Alias Lists from the web interface, including names, descriptions, groups, colors, icons, recording choices, Scan List memberships, and streaming destinations.
RadioReference talkgroup CSV files are supported as well. Before anything is imported, VCE shows exactly what will be added or updated. There’s also a Replace mode when you intentionally want the file to become the new contents of that list.
The website now separates Radio Systems from Channels more clearly. A Radio System represents the actual trunked network, while Channels represent the individual sites or receiver configurations you’ve saved. This makes multi-site systems easier to understand and keeps activity, statistics, radios, talkgroups, and navigation grouped more consistently.
Some other visible improvements:
- The browser scanner now has Pause and Resume. While paused, calls continue collecting in a limited queue so you can resume without immediately losing your place.
- Hold and Avoid now follow the actual conversation more reliably across sites and channels. Trunked DMR talkgroups are no longer split just because they appeared on different timeslots.
- P25 duplicate-call handling has been improved. If the same call is received from multiple sites, VCE is less likely to play, record, or stream it more than once. The best available audio copy is used.
- The tuner spectrum has optional idle-channel markers, frequency-band overlays, narrower channel markers, cleaner controls, and separate display settings. The built-in frequency ranges now include public-safety and MURS/service groups, with a saved country selection. (US Only profile for now, open to having users from other countries submit their band plans)
- Receiver Health now shows the computer’s CPU, memory, disk, and Java cleanup activity alongside the existing tuner, decoder, recording, streaming, and queue information.
- Alias activity now defaults to showing the most frequently heard entries first.
- RadioReference imports make better use of county and category information when it’s available. (Faster loading of site list in the Radioreference tab)
- Missing factory Alias Lists are restored during migration. The default analog list is now consistently named “Default Analog.”
- Several P25 radio-ID, registration, roaming, patch-group, quality-display, statistics, and navigation problems were corrected.
- Tuner selection and retuning have been improved, especially when a tuner can cover a requested frequency after moving its center frequency. (Tuner logic now searches for an existing tuner before retuning another tuner)
- Each download now has an obvious “Start SDRTrunk VCE” launcher in the top-level folder for Windows, macOS, or Linux.
- CSV Export for the Alias Lists table, Talker Aliases are shown in more tables
I also addressed several migration failures reported in the last few posts. The first version of this migration was too strict.
This update contains substantial database changes. Your Channels, Alias Lists, accounts, recording choices, and valid streaming configuration are intended to be preserved, but receiver-generated activity, quality history, affiliations, learned site information, and statistics will restart so they can rebuild cleanly. Once the new database has been upgraded, don’t try to open that copy with an older build.
Nightlies are still pre-release builds, so backups remain important. Thank you to everyone posting the exact errors they encounter. Those reports have been extremely helpful for finding older database conditions I couldn’t reproduce on my own systems.
Download:
Release SDRTrunk VCE Nightly · tylerwatt12/sdrtrunk-vce
