Tag: dali-scope

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Rail-DALI-DMX: Power cycle and fault conditions

Users who are more familiar with DMX512 than DALI can find the way DALI ballasts respond to power cycle or fault conditions confusing. A key difference between DMX512 and DALI is that DMX512 is continuously refreshing whereas DALI is not.

When a DMX512 fixture is power cycled it will immediately take the DMX512 level data. When a DALI ballast is power cycled it will go to a pre-programmed level called “POWER ON LEVEL”. It will stay at that level until a new DALI level command is sent. DALI-Scope can be used to both read and programme the ballast’s “POWER ON LEVEL”.

When a DALI ballast detects a fault, such as a brown out of the DALI BUS POWER SUPPLY it will go to a pre-programmed level called “SYSTEM FAILURE LEVEL”. It will stay at that level until a new DALI level command is sent. Dali-Scope can be used to read the ballast’s “SYSTEM FAILURE LEVEL”.

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Dali-Scope: Adding a ballast to an existing system

It is sometimes necessary to add a new ballast to an existing installation. Usually you will want to do this without changing the short addresses of the existing ballasts.

To do this you need to isolate the new ballast from the existing network prior to commissioning with Dali-Scope. This means that you should connect the new DALI ballast, the bus power supply and Dali-Scope together. If the new ballast has previously been assigned a short address, simply change the short address to the preferred address using Dali-Scope. If the ballast is in factory default state, run an “Automatic channel discovery”. This process will assign short address 1 to the ballast. Then change the short address to the preferred value prior to connecting it to the ballast network.

You can then connect the new ballast to the existing network.