Technical information about DALI for Consultants

Some handy hints for Consultants using or specifying DALI are listed below

 

• DALI provides enormous amounts of freedom for designers and allows future flexibility.
• Each DALI bus can have a maximum of 64 DALI devices. This limit does not include DALI controllers such as DALI switches, sensors or controllers.
• Each DALI device and sometimes even the switches and controllers will consume some of the DALI bus power. For example a DALI ballast normally consumes 2mA. A designer must ensure that the system bus power should not be exceeded.
• The DALI power supply MUST not exceed 250mA
• Devices on the same bus can be powered by different phases or completely different supplies allowing for easy segregation in a multiple tenancy building.
• Each DALI device can be a member of up to 16 groups. A DALI device can be a member of none, one or multiple DALI groups.
• Each DALI device can have up to 16 preset scene recall levels. A DALI device is not required to be a part of a DALI scene
• The minimum and maximum levels of a DALI device can be changed to limit the user?s controllable range
• The system power on level can be set at a defined level to ensure the DALI lighting always returns to the correct level when the lights are turned on
• The system failure level can be set to ensure the lighting acts in a safe and practical manner (see DALI examples for some useful hints)