The Digital Addressable Lighting Interface (DALI) is a digital protocol for the controlling of lighting in buildings, such as electrical ballasts and dimmers.
DALI was established as a successor for the still market dominating 1-10v and an open standard rival to Digital Signal Interface (DSI), on which it is based. DALI is standardized in accordance with International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) 60929, standard for fluorescent lamp ballasts.
Each operating equipment with a DALI interface can be communicated with over DALI individually. Using a bi-directional data exchange, a DALI controller can query and set the status of each light. As a standalone system, DALI can be operated with a maximum of 64 devices. Alternatively, DALI can be used as a subsystem via DALI gateways.
Advantages
DALI is an open standard not exclusively owned by a single company. It only requires one bus wire for up to 64 devices.
Disadvantages
Each device gives itself a random number to identify itself, which makes inital installation and replacing faulty devices confusing as there is no indication which device is which, until the operator sends out test signals and looks to see which device responds. Being restricted to 64 addresses (six bits), DALI cannot be used in large installations without using another technology to workaround the limitation.
External links
Organisations
- AG-DALI, a working group set up by leading manufacturers and institutions in the field of digital lamp/luminaire control to promote DALI technology and applications