NEW DALI-OVER-ETHERNET PROTOCOL

5 March 2015

London-based lighting control designer Artistic Licence has launched a free open domain protocol called Art-Osc that enables the transport of DALI lighting control data over an ethernet network.

1055615_635142254900611212

The DALI (Digital Addressable Lighting Interface) standard provides a popular means of controlling ballasts that do not require fast special effects. It operates over low cost and simple wiring, but is limited to 64 devices per circuit. Until now, DALI has lacked a standardised and open method of integration into larger networks.

Art-Osc solves these problems by providing a non-proprietary method to transfer the DALI language over a network; putting this into numbers translates into control over a billion DALI ballasts. The solution bears close analogy with the invention of Art-Net, an ethernet protocol designed to overcome the channel restriction of DMX512 while still utilising its structure.

Art-Osc also has two other main areas of application: RDM visualisation and network remote control.

While RDM allows a lighting controller or building management computer to report on equipment status, it is not designed to convey data in a user-friendly way. Art-Osc solves this by enabling simple integration of the RDM data to smartphones or tablets. Because it sits on the widely used OSC (Open Sound Control) standard, lighting users can benefit from numerous free or low-cost tools such as TouchOSC and Lemur for iPad and Android.

And finally, Art-Osc provides a standardised remote control syntax specifically written for the lighting control market, enabling automation and triggering of devices over the network.

Source: media release