About DALI Application

theasus · Joined: 31 May 2009 Posts: 79

Hi,
Could you propose anything or share your experiences about DALI (Digital Addressable Lighting Interface) applications with PIC-C?
Thanks.

theasus · Joined: 31 May 2009 Posts: 79

Is there anyone to answer my question?

temtronic · Posted: Sat Jun 25, 2011 5:18 am

You could use 'Google' to see what's readily available.DALI is not very compicated so I'd suggest writing your own driver.

Ttelmah · Joined: 11 Mar 2010 Posts: 19477

Have you tried searching?.
There have been a very few posts about DALI over the past few years. I did a little work with it, but over five years ago. From the silence, I suspect nobody here is currently involved with it.

Realistically, when I was working on it, you joined AG-DALI, and they sent a lot of stuff about the standard. There are some 'example' data sheets using Motorola chips which give the basic format, and flowcharts, as well as a lot of good data.
Problem (for me), is that this was a commercial product - it is now one of the DALI approved products, and the work is under a standard 'non disclosure' agreement. So I can say 'yes you can program a DALI interface with PIC-C', and if you tried to do this, I might be able to provide a little guidance, _but_ I can't tell you much at all about what we did....

Best Wishes

temtronic · Posted: Sat Jun 25, 2011 7:47 pm

Ok, spent about 2 minutes with Google and it found a great 162 page PDF from Motorola, complete with everything anyone needs to program a DALI device.
It should only take a day or two to get a full working driver 'up and running'.

Like I said before, easy stuff...where was Google 30 years ago when I needed it.....

theasus · Joined: 31 May 2009 Posts: 79

I have already searched Google. And I know the first step of design is "Searching"
And yes we can find a lot of documents and applications about DALI. But these are not my problem. Actually I tried to run AN809 which is an application note of Microchip. But I couldn't run this application. There are some problem about DALI side of this board. But I couldn't find its evaluation board because it was designed about 9 years ago. And I couldn't find any evaluation board with DALI for PIC. I know there are a lot of evaluation board for ARM based microprocessor but I don't want to use it for this operation I want to use PIC. And I have read a lot of documents, I couldn't find my communication problem. I guess there are some problem about AN809 (hardware or software.)
Maybe you can propose any other way.

Thanks.

temtronic · Posted: Sun Jun 26, 2011 5:27 am

One way is to buy an ARM based DALI board, remove the ARM processor and install a PIC. Requires a bit of talent to create the 'conversion' pcb. You could just hardwire or solderstitch a DIP socket for test purposes. I've done this in the past as it was cheaper to buy a premade module than to make my own. Staying with PICs has it's advantages after 25 years !
Without a solid hardware platform and a known program, it's difficult to diagnose your 'communications' problem. Could be software, hardware, parts layout, grounding, data levels, the list is endless.
Do you have that Motorola info or similar? It clearly explains in great detail the 'workings' of DALI, so with that and a scope troubleshooting should be fairly easy.
As these are 'slaves', are you confident the 'master' is 100%? A side by side comparison of a working slave and your PIC project should be easy with a scope.

aaronik19 · Joined: 25 Apr 2011 Posts: 297

Dear all,

I found this link which is very helpful. Philips were one of the pioneers who designed the DALI with other companies. Kindly take a look and if you need more help, just question.

http://www.lighting.philips.com/main/subsites/dynalite/library_support/technical_support/useful_information/dali_introduction.wpd