Release notes

0.1.7

• Find data feeds. The Connections tab can now look for instrument feeds on this computer and on the boat's network and show them as cards - pick one and Apply. Choose Automatic or Manual input; the scan runs only when you press Find feeds, and it only ever reads.
• Other Ocean Racing apps can recognise Instrument Bridge. Each app connecting to its feed is told it is talking to Instrument Bridge, with the version and how healthy the feed is.
• Expedition's own data format as an input. Instrument Bridge can now take its data straight from Expedition: choose "Expedition on this computer" on the Connections tab (or pick its card from Find feeds), or point the TCP or UDP input at Expedition's own network output. Instrument Bridge records everything Expedition sends and passes it on as standard NMEA 0183, so any app that reads NMEA gets Expedition's position, wind, boat speed, heading, depth, pressure and more - and so does the recording.
• Opening Instrument Bridge again brings it forward. Launching it while it is already running now brings the running window to the front, instead of showing a message.
• Updates find you. Instrument Bridge checks for updates once a day while it runs, says so with a notification and a small mark on its tray icon, and the update banner has a close button that hides it for a day. About always shows any update or withdrawal that is known, and checking for updates while offline no longer forgets an update that was already found.
• Clearer withdrawal messages. If a published release is withdrawn, Instrument Bridge now says so plainly instead of suggesting that the version you are running was pulled.
• A refreshed look. Windows 11 style scroll bars and buttons, and faster switching between light and dark themes.
• More reliable capture. A record kept complete under heavy load from many connected apps, a briefly busy input port at start-up no longer stops capture, and a crash can no longer leave Instrument Bridge unable to capture until a file is deleted.
• Your settings are safer. A settings file that is briefly locked when Instrument Bridge starts (by antivirus or a backup tool, for example) is handled in a safer manner.
• General improvements and bug fixes.

0.1.6

• Millisecond timestamps in the recorded log - every line is now stamped to the millisecond
• General improvements and bug fixes

0.1.5

• Several CPU and Memory optimizations significantly improving performance
• Enhanced themes - light and dark themes now manually selectable

0.1.4

• Fixed a bug in the auto-update process. Auto-update is now more reliable.
• If this update was not offered to you automatically, install it manually from ocean.racing. Some installations upgraded in place could not reach the update service; installing this version once puts that right.

0.1.3

• True wind angle now shows which tack you are on. TWA was previously shown without its sign, so a port-tack angle looked identical to a starboard one. It is now signed (negative to port), read from the wind sentence that actually carries the tack.
• More of your instruments decoded. Ten further values now appear on the Values tab out of the box, including target boat speed, target TWA, heel, pitch, leeway, and tide set and drift.
• Feed health better survives a clock change. If the computer's clock jumps - as it does when a GPS time source corrects a drifting clock after start-up - Instrument Bridge no longer reports a healthy feed as lost, and no longer shows live instruments as stale.
• A value's units are never guessed. Where a sentence does not state its units, the value is shown exactly as sent rather than being labelled with a unit it may not have.
• See what a mapping is about to replace. Naming your own signals now tells you which values will stop being decoded before you apply it, and the Discover tab shows the mappings Instrument Bridge already ships as a worked example.
• Improved robustness for datagram handling. An oversized or rejected datagram is now counted and reported. Capture continues.
• Improved robustness for version checking and updating. Instrument Bridge is clearer about progress during application version updates.
• Improved error logging. To aid in diagnosis in the unlikely event of an application abort.

0.1.2

• See where every value comes from. Hover any reading on the Values tab to see which instrument sentence it was decoded from - full traceability.
• Values tab now has a Recent sparkline so you can see how a given value is changing. The sparkline in the Sentences tab is a Heartbeat, signifying frequency of arrival, not value.
• Clearer value descriptions. Every decoded value now carries an accurate, plain-English description on hover of what it is.
• Steadier display across changing feeds. The Discover tab and your saved signal mappings now tolerate the set of instrument sentence types on your feed changing between sessions - or loading a mapping authored for a different boat - without disrupting the display. (Capture and the record were never affected.)

0.1.1

• Clearer "already running" message. Launching Instrument Bridge while it is already running now shows an on-screen notice pointing you to its icon in the system tray, instead of quietly doing nothing.

0.1.0

First release of Instrument Bridge.

• Faithful record + live TCP fan-out. Instrument Bridge captures your instrument feed and records every sentence losslessly to disk (the ground-truth log), while serving that same live stream to any number of TCP clients. AIS (!AIVDM) is included over TCP.
• Always-on capture. Recording runs whenever a valid input is configured and cannot be stopped by accident. Start / Stop governs only the TCP distribution; the record keeps running through a Stop.
• Health at a glance. The Status tab shows feed, record, and client health so you can trust the bridge in one look, with tray notifications on state changes.
• Instrument diagnosis. The Instruments tab learns each sentence type's normal cadence and flags a type that goes quiet relative to its own history, with a per-type rate sparkline.
• Discover unmapped signals. The Discover tab surfaces the proprietary sentence types your instruments send, shows real example data and measured structure, and lets you name fields and map them locally so they decode into the Values tab. Import or export your instruments profile for other Ocean Racing tools, and a "Moves with" hint suggests which known signal an unmapped field tracks.
• Compressed rotated logs. The record rotates at local midnight; the previous day is compressed to a Windows-native .zip to save disk (a toggle in Settings, on by default).
• Auto-update. Instrument Bridge checks for a new version on start-up and shows an "update available" banner. Click Update to download, verify, and install, or use About > Check for updates any time.