User Manual

5-5
Siemens Switzerland Ltd www.siemens.com/gamma 2019
Building Technologies Division
Lighting
Overview
DALI control output
KNX and DALI – a strong team
The Digital Addressable Lighting Interface (DALI) was introduced in 2004 to replace the
classic 1...10 V interface on the market. The manufacturer neutral DALI bus is a system
control electronic control gear (ballast or ECG) in lighting technology. International standard IEC 62386 specifies the DALI communication inter-
face. In addition to ECGs, the DALI interface also supports selected sensors.
DALI communication allows all DALI devices to be simultaneously controlled with same command (broadcast). When controlled via broadcast, all
DALI devices respond as if they were jointly controlled via one 1...10 V interface. A second control method under DALI is to assign a DALI device to
one of up to 16 groups (group addressing) or to control each individual DALI device (individual addressing).
DALI is not limited to receiving just switching and dimming commands, but can also report status information on lighting status or fault states,
e.g. in the event a luminaire or ECG fails.
DALI can assign DALI devices to up to 16 scenes. The specific settings for each scene are then stored in the individual DALI devices and can be
started with a single command allowing complex scenes or very fast command processing. And yet the expense of dimming with KNX and DALI
does not exceed 1...10 V. In fact, if you compare wiring expenses for DALI and 1...10 V as well as the difference in costs for materials and work,
you can implement a project with DALI at approximately one third less than with 1...10 V.
In the simplest level, a control device for lighting control with DALI can include a brightness sensor, presence detector, or a combination of
brightness sensor/presence detector that controls a group of luminaires by occupancy and daylight. For these simple, local applications, where
DALI from one sensor is used as the interface to one or more DALI devices, the broadcast is used as a replace for classic control via 1...10 V. In this
regard, these applications are not considered networked systems.
In just one DALI line, up to 64 individual DALI ECGs (slaves) can be connected by the connected control device/gateway (master). The ECG re-
ceives an address generated automatically during DALI commissioning and in another commissioning step, receives a short address of 0...63
based on the initial address. The device assignment is random since the address assignment is automatic and the individual ECG/luminaires must
be initially identified as the commissioning process proceeds. Individual ECG are addressed either based on the short address (individual control)
or based on a DALI group address (group addressing). To this end, any number of ECG from one line may be assigned in up to 16 DALI groups. The
group addressing in the DALI system ensures that switching and dimming actions are executed by the various luminaires within a system at the
same time (i.e. without delay). Individual luminaire values can be compiled in individual DALI ECG, in addition to addressing by short addresses
and group addresses and initiated via scene addressing.
With the release of DALI edition 2 all DALI devices will be tested and certified properly. Especially ECGs will be more compatibel to KNX/
DALI Gateways caused by these standized tests. DALI edition 2 ECG are backwards compatible to DALI edition 1 ECG.
Additional information on DALI is available in the DALI technical manual at: www.dali-ag.org
Compare 1...10 V control system to DALI with KNX
1 ... 10 V control
Switch/dimming actuators
Switch/dimming actuators
Switch/dimming actuators
24 V DC
ECG
ECG
ECG
DALI ECG
DALI ECG
DALI ECG
230 V AC
I201_14024a
KNX
1 ... 10 V
DALI
KNX/DALI Gateway
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