Art-Net to individual DALI fixtures

[marklohrey]

Hello,

I am sure the DALIcore can do this but I just wanted to reassure myself before diving in.

We have a basketball stadium that we use for events sometimes. We set up a 'stage' on one of the courts. We have a lighting bar with some conventional profiles and some movers to light people on stage etc These are controlled from MagicQ sending DMX data over art-net to a quadcore on the lighting network. This all works very well.

At the moment, the basketball lighting is managed by a KNX to DALI system and we can use that to control the 'house' lights from an iPad.  At the moment one of those 'sliders' controls the all the main lights  over the basketball court.

What I would really like to able to do is control the lights over the court individually and ideally from MagicQ. I would like to create a dimmer channel in MagicQ that corresponds to each of the lights on the court and then control them as I would any DMX fixture.
Is this something that is easily accomplished?

Cheers
Mark

[François Lonnee]

Hi Mark,

Yes! You can 'map' an Art-Net channel to control intensity of (a group of) DALI fixtures.
So, in ShowControl on the DaliCore, choose the Art-Net Action list, add an action, triggering on the channel that you will be using to control intensity. Then add a 'Fixture' task that controls intensity.

Please be aware that this does not fade in the same way as DMX does. Fade times are set in the DALI fixtures, and you can change them on the DALI patch page of the DaliCore.

Let us know if you need more assistance!

Cheers,

[marklohrey]

Hello Francois,

Thank-you for your quick response.

I assume that I then will need an action and fixture task for each DALI light fitting that would correspond to each DMX address I use in the lightingConsole software. My thinking is to use another universe for the DALIcore and add dimmers for each DALIfixture in the patch.

So in terms of fading, It would be best to try and send the DALI fixture a particular DMX value say to set it to 100% and then send another DMX value say to 50% and then let the fixture fade between the two?

While I have some experience working with DMX lighting but I have none working with DALI  and I don't want to upset the lighting system already in place. My plan is to use the DALIcore as an 'extra' controller to allow a bit more flexibility when running events. We will just have to avoid the use of other controllers (touch panels) etc when using the dalicore.

Cheers
Mark

[François Lonnee]

Hi Mark,

sorry for the late reply! We were on the road for a tradeshow the past days.

Yes, you are correct: The best is to send a fixed desired value to the DALI device, and it will then manage the fading.

If at some point you need the DALI fixtures to not respond, you can disable the Art-Net action list altogether. This can be done manually in the web interface, using for instance a switch on the GPI connector, or through network message from another device.

Kind regards,