Development of master controller and Android application for Dali protocol

Abstract

Lighting Control System is an important part of the building automation system. Lighting control system facilitates energy savings, and plays a significant part in green buildings and energy conservation. Lighting control system can control, dim and switch off lights based on occupancy, available daylight and other such factors thereby reducing the power consumed. Various protocols like 0-10V, DMX 512 and DALI are available for lighting control. DALI, along with DMX 512, is one of the two popular standards for lighting control in the present and near future. The project aims at investigating DALI protocol and developing a master controller for DALI using Arduino Uno. Firstly, the background and scope of the project are presented. Secondly, various lighting control system are discussed and the DALI’s advantage is highlighted. Next, a description of the hardware involved in this project is given, followed by the description of the DALI protocol. The author discusses an implementation of DALI master controller and development of the Arduino Library for the master controller. Finally, an Android application has been created to use a smartphone as a wireless control unit for DALI. This can reduce the amount of hardware needed for a DALI based lighting control system. In addition, it also provides the users with a better user interface to use DALI’s features, especially DALI’s extensive capabilities of configuring each lamp in the network differently.