Lighting/DALI management – NETx LaMPS
Digital Addressable Lighting Interface (DALI)
Application specific protocol
for lighting systems
- Vendor-independent representation of DALI gateways and devices
Advanced features
for lighting control
- Tests of lamps and ballasts
- Special functionality for emergency lighting
Pure field
level protocol
- Mostly used in combination with system standards like KNX
- No standardized IP interface
KNX & DALI
- KNX is the most common way to integrate DALI
- Some KNX/DALI gateways have multiple channels
- Up to 64 DALI devices can be connected to one (1) channel
- Using KNX, DALI can be connected to Building Management Systems (BMS) - Visualization, monitoring, maintenance of lighting control
- KNX/DALI gateways are used to interconnect the DALI bus to KNX
- DALI data and information are provided as KNX group objects - objects for: lighting control (on/off, dimming, status, ...), maintenance (trigger tests, providing test results, ...), emergency lighting control (emergency status, emergency tests, ...)
KNX group object mapping for DALI
- High amount of functions and high amount of devices per gateway would result in a high amount of KNX group objects at the gateway
- To avoid this, only parts of the functionality are available for each DALI device
- Group objects per DALI device: on/off, dimming, status, ...
- Group object per channel: trigger function tests, test results, ...
- Stateful communication is required to get all information per device, e.g. DALI tests
KNX data point types (DPTs) for DALI
- Standard functions are available as standard DPTs (e.g. dimming)
- Many KNX/DALI gateways use even non-standardized DPTs
- For enhanced functions like testing, complex DPTs are used, e.g. DPT_DALI_Control_Gear_Diagnostics
Manufacturer-specific implementation
- There are many different manufactures for KNX/DALI gateways
- Only standard functionality is common to all DALI gateways (on/off, dimming, ...)
- Advanced features like DALI testing are manufacturer-specific
- Manufacturer-specific: non-standardized DPTs
- stateful communication logics are required
- Time-consuming and complex task for integrators and electrical engineers
LaMPS Module for NETx BMS Platform
- Extension module for NETx BMS Platform
- Provides manufacturer-independent view of KNX/DALI gateways
- Uniform data point view
- Triggering DALI tests
- Show common DALI errors and error for each device separately
- Support for DALI emergency tests
- Stores test results in SQL database
- Reporting tool for generating customized reports
- Automatic export from ETS5 using NETx BMS App Secure
- Support for multiple KNX/DALI gateways: ABB, Gira, Hager, IPAS, Jung, MDT, Schneider, Siemens, Zennio, EAE, ...
LaMPS Module workflow
- Export configuration from ETS5 via NETx BMS App Secure
- Import configuration into NETx BMS Platform
- Using a uniform data point view – Core Studio, Visualization, ...
- Generate reports using reporting tool
