The frequency with which DMX and DALI systems are being used together is continually increasing and has now become common practice. The need to control DALI fixtures with DMX controllers has similarly increased and become more sophisticated, to the point where simple conversion is no longer adequate.
The new requirement is for a DMX controller that can control DALI fixtures in the way they have been designed to operate, rather than trying to force a DALI fixture to behave like a DMX fixture. DALI is slow in comparison to DMX and therefore has more of a control structure than DMX which must be taken into consideration at the product design stage.
Rail-DMX-DALI has been designed with this knowledge, combined with customer feedback, to give the best of both worlds and allow seamless integration between these two vastly different protocols.
Rail-DMX-DALI offers the following features: Four DALI Bus Outputs. Each Bus is capable of controlling 64 ballasts; Channel Control (Broadcast or Unicast) - a DMX value can be used to control single ballasts or broadcast to all ballasts on a single output; Group Control (Broadcast or Unicast) - a DMX value can be used to control individual groups on the separate outputs or all groups on all outputs; Scenes (Broadcast or Unicast) - scene commands can be sent out globally or to the individual outputs. Each of these three different control techniques can be setup and used simultaneously.
Housed in a standard DIN Rail enclosure, Rail-DMX-DALI can be mounted easily within a control cabinet or surface mounted using the integral mounting clips. Rail-DMX-DALI complies with the DMX512-A specification and can be controlled with any DMX controller.
For DALI usage, Rail-DMX-DALI requires a DALI Bus PSU to allow data exchange between the unit and the DALI fixtures, as stated by DALI the specification.
An example of a common application for Rail-DMX-DALI would be the control of house lighting from a DMX controller. With Rail-DMX-DALI, the DMX lighting desk can have independent control over the individual ballasts, but also use the Groups and Scenes functions to quickly control all fixtures and avoid speed issues.
(Jim Evans)
