Use DALI Dimmer to Build Smart Home and Home Automation

May 4
14:05

2016

Weird Jerry

Weird Jerry

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DALI (Digital Addressable Lighting Interface) is a data protocol and transport mechanism that was jointly developed and specified by several manufacturers of lighting equipment. Dimmer and switch with DALI interface are great solution for smart lighting control and home automation.

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DALI network consists of a controller and one or more lighting devices (e.g.,Use DALI Dimmer to Build Smart Home and Home Automation Articles electrical ballasts, LED drivers and dimmers) that have DALI interfaces. The controller can monitor and control each light by means of a bi-directional data exchange. The protocol permits devices to be individually addressed and it also incorporates Group and Scene broadcast messages to simultaneously address multiple devices.

 

DALI devices include LED drivers, fluorescent HF ballasts, low voltage transformers, PE cells, motion detectors, wall switches and gateways to other protocols. There can be up to 64 devices on a single network. Sites requiring more than 64 devices are implemented by having multiple separate networks, each with up to 64 devices. These separate networks are then linked together with DALI gateways and a data backbone running a high level protocol.

 

Since each bus allows multiple controllers and devices, the lamps in different areas of your house can be connected to one DALI bus for more convenient control and control separately.

 

The controllers in the market are available with different control types including rotary knob, push button and touch control panel which feature smooth brightness dimming and switching functions. The master control unit is available with color temperature adjustment function for dual color LED lighting and RGB color tone adjustment function for RGB/RGBW LEDs as well. Master controllers are powered directly by DALI Bus with very little power consumption. The controller also features the automatic address assignment function and enable to select different single light address, group address for controlling by encoding switch.

 

The devices with DALI interface for example LED driver which receive and encode DALI signal to control the connected LED lights are available with AC or DC type to be compatible with different LED lamps. And the DC devices are available with constant voltage or constant current output to fit different light types. Generally the devices are designed with standard DALI control interface with numeric digital display which enables users to set address manually and maximally 64 addresses can be set. The devices can be available in 1 channel or 4 channels output to fit for single color LEDs, dual color LEDs or RGB+W LEDs. DALI dimmer can also get push dim function while connected with a normal push switch.