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This page describes some work I'm doing on computer control of the TenTec Omni VI+.  The command set is described in the owners manual, although some things are a bit vague.  There is also a little folklore out there about commands to deal with the N1 and N2 filter positions that is not documented in the manual. 

I wrote the program OmniTest to experiment with these commands.  It allows you to send anything to the Omni, but tries to make it easy to send meaningful stuff.  Feel free to download this program (and the source code). 

The Omni6Plus driver for WriteLog takes advantage of the Driver SDK provided on the WriteLog download page and attempts to make a driver and front panel for the Omni VI+ in a WriteLog context.  The Omni VI driver provided with WriteLog works, but lacks some features that one might like.  This is an attempt to get at some of those features.  Since WriteLog doesn't anticipate all possible capabilities of all possible rigs it is not straightforward to make everything function as one might like.  The Front Panel gives one a chance to make an Omni VI+ version of WriteLog.

OmniTest

Make sure you have a good understanding of what you are asking the Omni to do when you use this program.  It is probably possible to send it into very bad states with a program like this, so use a little caution.  Make sure the Omni is hooked up to a dummy load if you plan to use transmit commands.

The manual documents the SetMode command as taking data of 02, 03, 04, 05 for the four 6.3 Mhz filters.  It turns out that if you send 06 or 07 it selects the two 9 Mhz filters.  The filter commands do some interesting things like letting you turn on both the N1 and N2 filters at the same time.  Since you can't do this from the front panel I'm guessing it's not a real good thing.

Sending the transmit state locks the PTT on the Omni.  You will have to send the command to move it back to receive state to unlock it.

The program builds up a command out of a prefix, a command, a subcommand (or data) and the suffix.  At the user level the commands are shown as hex digits.  The prefix is generally four bytes (FE FE 04 E0).  You can reset to those values by clicking the "Default" button.  Similarly, the suffix is one byte (FD) and clicking that "Default" button will reset it.  The command may be selected from the documented commands by using the combo box.  An undocumented command may be entered by clicking the "Special" button (it will then show up in the combo box for the session).  The subcommand and/or data my be entered as a sequence of hex digits.  The "Freq" and "Mode" buttons allow you to construct the hex digits a little easier.  Below the prefix and command boxes you will see the "standard form" of the selected command as described in the manual.

Once you have entered a complete message make sure that the port and baud rate are set correctly then press the "Go" button.  The program will convert the various fields into the form that the Omni wants to see and send the message.  It will pause briefly and the see how the Omni responds.  The info sent and the response will be displayed on the bottom half of the box.  At the very bottom is shown the expected response as described in the manual.

Click below to download:

Omni6Plus rig driver for WriteLog (not quite ready yet)

This is a "beta" version of driver for the Omni VI+.  I ran it for a few hours in JARTS 2001 and it seemed to work OK, but doesn't do all I want just yet.  I'm open to suggestions for what else it should do.  It is turning out that the controls that are available are somewhat weak, and/or I haven't figured out the tricks.  In it's current state it is about the same as the driver that comes with WriteLog for the Omni VI.

To install it, just extract ... The next time you run WriteLog click on "Setup/Ports..." and you should see TenTec Omni VI+ is the list of rig types.  Select it and away you go.  To make life a little simpler for me I added a section to the writelog.ini file called "[OMNI VI+ DRIVER]".  It should look like:

I've pretty much abandoned this project.  The command set wasn't strong enough for me to add anything that seemed helpful.  I just use the Omni VI driver in WriteLog these days.