These DALI reference designs enable quick control, dimming, and testing of LED lighting without additional hardware or complex setup.
DALI (digital addressable lighting interface) has become the standard for reliable communication and control in modern LED lighting systems, enabling functions like switching, dimming, and status reporting across multiple devices. For engineers developing DALI-based lighting, reference designs provide ready-made hardware and software solutions that simplify integration, reduce development time, and ensure DALI protocol compliance. These designs address key needs such as smooth dimming, two-way communication, electrical isolation, and stable LED current, while supporting configurations ranging from single LED drivers to multi-device networks.
LED driver with DALI dimming
This reference design enables you to build LED drivers with integrated DALI dimming, without adding extra control or power stages. It supports two-way DALI communication, allowing the driver to receive commands and report status while keeping the control side electrically isolated. LED brightness is adjusted smoothly from 0 to 100 per cent using PWM-based current control, preventing flicker and visible dimming steps. The design keeps DALI inactive at startup to ensure stable turn-on, then enables dimming once normal operation begins. A regulated 5V supply powers the DALI microcontroller, and simple optocoupler isolation prevents ground loops. By handling DALI communication, dimming control, isolation, and power within the reference design, it reduces firmware effort, the need for extra circuitry, and integration risk for engineers building DALI-compatible LED lighting systems.
Applications: DALI-controlled LED lighting systems that require reliable, smooth dimming, and two-way communication.
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OEM Brand: Power Integration
DALI-2 lighting system
Design engineers working with DALI often face challenges in understanding the protocol, connecting multiple luminaires, and testing dimming behaviour without building a complete system. This DALI lighting control solution addresses those challenges by providing a ready reference setup that combines hardware, software, and basic cloud support. It allows one controller to manage up to 64 DALI devices, making it easier to test dimming, communication, and system behaviour in real DALI networks. A built-in DALI-2 interface removes the need to design and debug the protocol from scratch. You can control lights through a PC, over the web, or using simple switches, depending on what you need to test. This helps you test DALI features such as group control, scenes, and response timing under real-world conditions.
Applications: The solution simplifies DALI development, accelerates testing, and helps you focus on building reliable DALI-based lighting products.
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OEM Brand: Renesas
AC-mains LED lighting with DALI
DALI-based LED lighting systems require stable power delivery, smooth dimming, and reliable two-way communication, while also meeting efficiency and AC compliance requirements. This reference design simplifies development by combining an AC-input LED driver with built-in DALI support, allowing lighting fixtures to be dimmed, addressed, and controlled remotely without additional communication hardware. The design supports multiple LED strings with independent dimming, maintains stable LED current during DALI commands, and delivers high efficiency and power factor. By integrating power conversion, dimming control, and DALI communication into a single platform, it reduces development time, lowers design risk, and simplifies the creation of networked DALI lighting systems for real-world installations.
Applications: A wide range of DALI-enabled LED lighting applications.
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OEM Brand: Texas Instruments
Smarter lighting with a DALI slave
This reference design demonstrates how you can build a DALI slave device for smart lighting systems. It enables the addition of a standard DALI communication interface to lighting devices operating as slave nodes on a DALI network, allowing them to respond to a central controller for functions such as switching, dimming, and scene control. The design includes ready-to-use software that handles DALI signalling, interprets commands, sends responses, and interfaces with the physical DALI bus. It adheres to DALI standards, separates protocol handling from low-level device control, manages timing for reliable communication, and incorporates error detection to support operation in electrically noisy environments.
Applications: LED drivers, ballasts, luminaires, smart lighting modules, and retrofit upgrades used in commercial, industrial, and building automation systems.
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OEM Brand: STMicroelectronics
DALI Slave lighting control
In modern smart lighting and building automation systems, reliable lighting control depends on robust communication between the central controller and each luminaire. DALI is a widely used standard that enables this communication. A DALI Slave allows a lamp or LED driver to interpret controller commands and perform functions such as switching, dimming, and status reporting. The DALI Slave reference design shows how to connect an AVR microcontroller to a DALI bus and control LED lights. It has three main parts: the DALI interface, the microcontroller, and the LED driver. The microcontroller decodes DALI commands, controls dimming, and drives the LEDs using its built-in timers and communication tools. The LED driver uses a buck converter with MOSFETs to provide smooth dimming up to 300mA and is placed on a separate board for easy testing and customisation.
Applications: Testing and customisation across a wide range of lighting applications.
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OEM Brand: Microchip
These DALI reference designs make it easier for engineers to build LED lights that can be controlled reliably. By addressing core requirements such as DALI communication, dimming, isolation, and power management, you reduce the need to design every element from scratch. Whether you are building a basic LED driver, a complete DALI-2 lighting network, or a smart DALI Slave device, these reference designs help shorten development cycles, reduce errors, and support faster testing and customisation.
Nidhi Agarwal is Senior Technology Journalist at EFY with a deep interest in embedded systems, development boards, and IoT cloud solutions.
