DALI Groups and Ballasts

Discussion in 'C-Bus Toolkit and C-Gate Software' started by asaf, Jul 2, 2008.

  1. asaf

    asaf

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    Second Time posting this message, yesterday's post has disappeared.


    Wondering if any engineers are reading:

    I have an issue with the way the DALI gateway operates. The situation is as follows: I have a DALI gateway configured with 64 Group Addresses for Ballasts 1-64 + 16 Group Addresses for DALI Groups 1-16.

    One ballast can be a member of many groups and each group may have many ballasts in it.

    If I turn on a CBUS-DALI group which turns on say DALI group 1 and ballasts 1-10 turn on, the CBUS GA in for the DALI group will be ON, but the individual group addresses for ballasts 1-10 will be off. Enabling Status Correction will then proceed to turn off these group addresses. Clearly the DALI gateway doesn't understand the relationship you've programmed between DALI ballasts and DALI groups (even though it could query this information from the ballasts and store it internally).

    How can I get the individual group addresses for each ballast to turn on? Creating logic or a scene trigger is not feasable. I have noticed that the DALI gateway has a LampPower property which holds the relevant information. How does the LampPower property store the information and could I create a program which would periodically poll the gateway and set group addresses on the CBUS network?

    Any help is appreciated.
     
    asaf, Jul 2, 2008
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  2. asaf

    ashleigh Moderator

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    See the announcement from admin. The forum moved servers and about 2 hours of postings were lost.
     
    ashleigh, Jul 2, 2008
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  3. asaf

    ashleigh Moderator

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    Don't use status correction with DALI groups.

    It is possible to set up DALI groups in ways which have no sensible relationship at all to cbus groups. The setup you have described is but one of many possible setups. Most setups using DALI groups lead to tears before bedtime when it comes to using status correction.

    The point of status correction is to make the cbus groups GOD in the total installation - so the DALI state will be checked and compared to the cbus group, if different the cbus group will be re-applied.

    DALI groups on the other hand have no equivalent at all in cbus land. If you use DALI groups you are on your own. Don't use status correction. Period. The problem has no solution.

    If you want status correction, use C-Bus scenes instead.

    Alternatively use DALI groups exclusively and only map cbus groups to DALI groups. That **should** work but I don't have a setup in front of me to try it.

    Don't mix-n-match :)
     
    ashleigh, Jul 2, 2008
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  4. asaf

    asaf

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    bit of a issue with this. the installation in question has over 5000 dali ballasts across many disparate cbus networks. all cbus networks are connected to a schedule plus pc using cni's. the pc is used to get a visual representation on the status of loads. the loads are switched on using pirs or key inputs.

    it would not be possible to turn on 10 individual ballasts on a key input (due to the lack of blocks). it would not be possible to use scenes on the pc due to the number of scenes required. the other option is to install a pac on each network but this is not ideal because of the difficulty involved in updating over cbus when a change I made.
     
    asaf, Jul 2, 2008
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  5. asaf

    ashleigh Moderator

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    In that case try using a map from cbus groups -> DALI groups (groups only).

    S+ will show the status of the groups, not the individual ballasts.

    If you want ballast error reports you can enable that and get reports of lamp failures come back.

    Alternatively, as earlier, just turn off status correction. It is a nice-to-have, it is not essential.
     
    ashleigh, Jul 3, 2008
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  6. asaf

    asaf

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    Thanks Ash,

    This particular project requires both DALI groups and Ballast addresses to be used.

    Status Correction is off - always has been. I was making the point that status correction can't work when you are using both group and ballast mapping.

    It seems the LampPower property of the DALI gateway in C-Gate is a binary addition of the power status of the lamps. I could try to decipher it but it will take some time to fully understand each property.
     
    asaf, Jul 3, 2008
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