Authors : R. Srividya and Ciji Pearl Kurian
Abstract: There are several proprietary protocols available in the market for the implementation of building automation systems used for enhancing the facilities available in a building. DALI (Digitally Addressable Lighting Interface) is a wired lighting protocol which sends and receives data to and from a digitally addressable ballast to control it. The protocol standard was called for to integrate all the lighting interfaces in a single building with the DALI supporting upto 64 devices to do so. Our current research is done to improve the cost efficiency of implementing this protocol by implementing it wirelessly using 2 XBee RF modules and using the IEEE 802.15.4 standard to transmit the address of the ballast along with different data packets to control their dimming. The 2 XBee modules are used to transmit RF data packets between the host PC and the remote DALI interface (Arduino setup). The Arduino board continuously runs the code to read the serial data from the packet received and thus, produce a corresponding digital output that has been used to control the dimmable ballast. The DALI standard uses a 19 bit data frame but the 802.15.4 protocol requires the data transmitted via. the XBee modules to be an API (Application Programming Interface) frame. We were successfully able to transmit RF data packets from our PC host and produce different digital outputs to control the dimming settings of our ballast.
R. Srividya and Ciji Pearl Kurian, 2019. Wireless Protocol for Enhanced Control of Lighting Devices. Journal of Engineering and Applied Sciences, 14: 8527-8531.