DALI input to dim strip brightness

Hi there, I would like to integrate Pixelblaze with a set of DALI-controlled lights. Generally I would like to control the brightness of the strips via the DALI signal.

I was wondering what would be the best way of doing this. One simple way that came to my mind would be to use a DALI to analog adapter module like this one and connect it to an analog input of the Pixelblaze (e.g. IO33 or IO34)::

On the software side, would it be possible to use the analog input directly in the pattern code to control the brightness?

On the hardware side, we would probably need a voltage divider as described here:
https://electromage.com/docs/GPIO#adc

Am I generally missing sth or is there a more simple way of doing this?

Cheers and thanks!

Wow, DALI. I’ve only seen it used in large industrial buildings and things like this:


Would like to hear more about what you’re building. It’s got to be interesting!

What you’ve proposed, using the 1-10v/relay device, with the voltage scaled from 0-1v for the Pixelblaze’s analog in, will work. In that case, you’ll have to add the analogRead()->brightness scaling code to every pattern you want to use.

I have nothing around that speaks DALI to test with, but if you’ve got a way to read DALI’s wire protocol with a Raspberry Pi or other computer of some sort (possibly using the code here?), you could use it with the Pixelblaze python client to send commands to your Pixelblaze over wifi.

This would let you control brightness for all patterns without code changes, and to get color temperature and color information from DALI too if you were so inclined.

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