What is DALI?

Digital Addressable Lighting Interface (DALI) is a lighting control standard defined under the European Standard IEC 60929. DALI facilitates the communication and therefore control of multiple devices such as ballast, transformers and other lighting equipment.

DALI was designed to replace traditional 1-10v analogue systems and proprietary digital systems such as DSI (Digital Serial Interface).

Designed on a distributed intelligent framework, each DALI device has on board memory that stores all relevant information about the device, including diagnostics, which reduces the technical requirements on the control system and the amount of data to be transmitted over the bus.

Unlike traditional lighting control protocols, DALI has bi-directional communication, allowing control systems to query data devices and obtain information about the status of each device. Queried information can be as simple as current state (on/off) or more technical, such as lamp status or battery level in the case of an inverter.

Scene selection and fault diagnostics are also available through DALI, making it very useful to use with building automation systems where remote supervising and service reports are required.

Follow up Articles to this page can be found here
[Why Choose DALI Lighting?]
[Why Use DALI Emergency?]

Example 1.DALI Communication

DALI is a Communication Language. Devices which speak the same language can exchange information

Example 2.DALI Control

Some control system such as PLCs can talk DALI natively, whereas others may need a translator to assist in the communication