DALI Power LED Driver

Board for driving (up to) 3 power LEDs according to the European Digital Adressable Lighting Interface (DALI) Standard, with a low power design. The board contains:

Board for driving (up to) 3 power LEDs according to the European Digital Adressable Lighting Interface (DALI) Standard, with a low power design. The board contains:

A 12V-3.3V regulator (to power the microcontroller)
A 1.5A Constant Current Buck Regulator for Driving High Power LEDs (LM3406 - Texas Instruments)
A 32-bit ARM Cortex-M0+ microcontroller (LPC812M101JD20 - NXP), to control the LED driver
A DALI interface, serving as a mediator (translating) between the 12V DALI signal from the external world and the signal to the microcontroller (based on this Freescale file: http://www.freescale.com/files/microcontrollers/doc/ref_manual/DRM004.pdf )
2 Luxeon Rebel power LEDs (can drive up to three). The microcontroller can be programmed to receive DALI signals from the DALI interface and interpret them, sending a correct control signal to the LED driver (e.g. interprets a DALI signal and sends a PWM signal to dim the lights).

Still needed:

Connections between the microcontroller and the LED driver

The microcontroller needs to be programmed

A DALI master UNIT

Project Elements

pcb-picture.jpg (JPG, 279.67 KB)

Circuit schematic (JPG, 168.17 KB)

teste3.pdf (PDF)

PCB with components representation

teste3_cima.pdf (PDF)

PCB Top layer

teste3_baixo.pdf (PDF)

PCB Bottom layer

Discussion (5 comments)

TheBug 9 years ago

A big problem with building a DALI device is that there (AFAIK) is no free specification of the protocol anywhere. The design examples from various microcontroller manufacturers which I have seen so far are flaky at best.

So that ends you up with either relying on incomplete information from app notes/code samples or having to shell out more than € 1000 for the official IEC/EN specs.

TheBug 9 years ago

Better take that offline, the spec is copyrighted material, even if it is the old version. The 2014 version of the DALI spec is not that much different and it has not been widely adopted yet. Partly that is due to the 2.0 spec not being complete yet. So using the older version is not hurting much. We still use it for our commercial DALI products, people start asking about 2.0 but when we tell them that the 3xx line of specs is still missing they are fine with the older version. For a LED driver you also need the IEC 62386-207 which defines additional commands specific for LED

Bobbylebob 9 years ago

I have an IEC62386 edition of year 2006. I don't know how far it is from current specification but I think it will give you 90% of information you need... Download this here : https://www.dropbox.com/sh/3xzm1gyixe4t8u1/AAD6aP9f-hN2OW3Pomf4IoWha?dl=0

2 Comment(s)

Yves Bastin 9 years ago

Hi,

My main job is to realise application for room management. The goal is to create some GUI or to use push buttons to control all the elements in the room like the sound, the video, the blinds, the heating, the lifts of projector and also the light. I use worldwide known systems like AMX or Extron but I have also written some applications for Windows or other. The problem where I am often facing is the interfacing mainly for the light where we have a lot of protocols (DMX, DALI, 0-10v, 1-10v, ...). Sometime I can find the right product but sometime nothing exist. Therefor, I have developed an interface card actualy based on a Wiznet Ethernet module (wiz200web). I am writing the firmware and I find information in an application note from Microchip (ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/AppNotes/01465A.pdf).

sam-0657.JPG (361kb)
ethernet8x0-10vdesc.png (154kb)
ethernet8x0-10v.png (56kb)

Ar Ha 8 years ago

Hello,

Where are you with your interface? Did you managed to interface with the dali bus?

Thanks

ClemensValens 9 years ago

Another good WIZ200web replacement is the WIZwiki-W7500 that is mbed and Arduino compatible and that provides secure web services. Regards, Clemens

ClemensValens 9 years ago

I checked with WIZnet and they confirm that the WIZ200web module is not a good choice for new designs as it is being phased out. They suggest that you switch to the WIZ550web module based on the new W5500 chip and the STM32F103 controller. If you decide to switch modules, then this project seems to be a good candidate for publication in the magazine. If you are interested, please create a project page for it (with the Create a Project button) so that other people can easily find it. Regards, Clemens

Yves Bastin 9 years ago

Hi Clemens, Thanks for your comment. The 10 other contacts are 0v, 12v and 8 0-10v outputs to control lighting equipments. I've posted the schematics. Thus the purpose of this card is to control 4 types of lighting systems (or other) with simple TCP/IP messages: - DALI master for 64 devices - 8 x 0-10v and 4 relays or - 4 x 0-10v and 4 x 1-10v with relays for fluo ballast. As the Wiznet module contain a web page in a RAM, I would also write the web pages to configure and test DALI slaves and the other outputs. I am currently writing the firmware in 3 times: - 0-10v and 1-10v with relays (in progress) - DALI master - The web pages Regards, Yves

ClemensValens 9 years ago

Interesting. So what exactly is the purpose of this board? I can see 4 relays and a DALI interface but what are the 10 other contacts for? All this can be controlled over HTTP I suppose. How does this board fit in a complete system? Regards, Clemens

3 Attachment(s) 5 Comment(s)

ClemensValens 10 years ago

Hi,

I am not into DALI so I don't know anything about the popularity and the usefulness of the protocol. Having said that, I recently came across application notes from NXP that show how to implement DALI as master and as slave and, here comes the interesting part, I have the hardware needed. (Except the DALI bus driver, but that is a minor problem.)

Currently I am working on an LPC1347 board meant to be a synthesizer and on a small LPC812 board that fits in almost everything.

The LPC1347 board is housed in an enclosure meant for mounting on a wall. It can be fitted with up to 8 rotary encoders, a small LCD, 2 bi-color LEDs and a pushbutton. The software for this all is working and I could integrate it in a DALI master. The cool thing of this processor is that it can be (re)programmed without special hardware, all you need is a PC with a USB port running Windows (which I do not consider special hardware ;-).

The hexagonal LPC812 board (the Cool Controller Concept or CoCo-ri-Co project, soon to go live) can be fitted with a ring of 16 bi-color LEDs, a buzzer, a rotary encoder, another bi-color LED, a pushbutton and extension connectors. It should not be too much work to port the DALI slave to this board. I also designed a slimmed-down version of this board for which I will soon post a video.

What do you think? Would this make an interesting DALI platform? Supposing of course that DALI is interesting.

Regards,
Clemens

0 Comment(s)

Bobbylebob 10 years ago

OK, now I've read through all your documents I understand how you did your work.

I think that if you want your project to be published and developped by other people, you have to offer them a all-in-one solution, allowing them to use your LED driver in a real life application. DALI is too uncommon for almost everyone...

I suggested to add my contribution to your DALI slave to fill the missing half of this all-in-one package. Both projects could be published together.

dscn6389-0.jpg (386kb)
dscn6390.jpg (235kb)
mcu-schematics.gif (75kb)
powerdali-schematics.gif (32kb)

Alexandre.Willik 10 years ago

2120231W@student.gla.ac.uk

Bobbylebob 10 years ago

That's it ! Your project is the slave or "Control Gear" in DALI terms, and my board is the master, or "Control Device". A typical DALI bus uses one control device and up to 64 control gears. On my side, I have developped this project during my last year internship in 2007. It is made of three "components" : The control device hardware which you can see here, the ATmega128 firmware which I also own and the PC software written in Java. I'm quite confident with the two first parts but the PC software has to be compiled again and Java is not really my favorite game... Unfortunately, I don't own the prototype board I made there and I need it to be sure all works before publishing could be considered. I'll talk about this project with Clemens to see if it's worth it to take this project out of the dust ;-) I'd like to discuss it in private, could I have your e-mail please ? Regards, .David.

Alexandre.Willik 10 years ago

Can I publish your contribution? Do I have your consent? (:

Alexandre.Willik 10 years ago

Hey If we combined our projects, would it be an all-in-one solution? I mean, if my part is a "half" of the project, is you project the other "half"? (: Regards

4 Attachment(s) 4 Comment(s)

Bobbylebob 10 years ago

Hi guy,

This project reminds me many things. I spent my last year internship working for 6 months on DALI bus at Atmel's application laboratory. I wrote slave library for AT90PWMx series which embedd a manchester UART. After that, I developped a small tool used to interface an USB bus and act as a DALI master and i wrote the application software in Java.

I was thinking DALI was becoming obsolete with new wireless technologies, dont'you?

Which DALI master did you use to develop you project? As this is uncommon for many of us, you absolutely have to suggest where to buy one to allow readers to use it.

My projects was designed to be published as an application note but Atmel let it drop after my mission. Maybe we could work together to offer both master and slave to elektor's readers?

Ar Ha 8 years ago

Hello,
Is there any update about this project? For my 6 months project, I got to build an dali interface to communicate to the DALI bus: Hardware and software. Could we update the master hardware. How to communicate with an ethernet connection?

Thanks

Bobbylebob 10 years ago

DALI is not very hard to decode and it could easily be implemented in a 8-bit MCU. It just needs a hardware manchester decoding uart to avoid bit banging the inputs. I had the same point of view with Bonkers and tried to use the smallest MCU as possible, but now, 32-bit devices are virtually as cheap as smallest ones !

Alexandre.Willik 10 years ago

Hello Actually, I'm using an LED driver chip to drive the LEDs. The LEDs drain a lot of current. The microprocessor is there to be programmed so it can translate the signal from the DALI unit and send it to the LED driver (e.g. translate from the DALI unit a signal to dim the lights and send it to the driver dimmer input). Regards

Bonkers 10 years ago

You're using a 32-bit microprocessor to drive 2 LED's, am I right? wouldn't a PIC be a more realistic solution?

Alexandre.Willik 10 years ago

Hello. At first, thank you for your contribution. I have built a DALI master based on this file: http://www.freescale.com/files/microcontrollers/doc/ref_manual/DRM004.pdf The master I have build was "attached" to a MBED. The MBED was programmed by another student, which means I have not worked on the software part of this project. Just to be sure: what do you want to do? Offer to the elektor's readers both master and slave "attached" to my LED driver? (: