Digital Serial Interface (DSI) is a
protocol
Protocol may refer to:
Sociology and politics
* Protocol (politics), a formal agreement between nation states
* Protocol (diplomacy), the etiquette of diplomacy and affairs of state
* Etiquette, a code of personal behavior
Science and technology
...
for the controlling of lighting in buildings (initially
electrical ballasts). It was created in 1991 by
Austria
Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...
n company
Tridonic and is based on
Manchester-coded 8-bit protocol,
data rate of 1200
baud
In telecommunication and electronics, baud (; symbol: Bd) is a common unit of measurement of symbol rate, which is one of the components that determine the speed of communication over a data channel.
It is the unit for symbol rate or modulatio ...
, 1 start
bit, 8 data bits (dimming value), 4 stop bits, and is the basis of the more sophisticated protocol
Digital Addressable Lighting Interface
Digital Addressable Lighting Interface (DALI) is a trademark for network-based products that control lighting. The underlying technology was established by a consortium of lighting equipment manufacturers as a successor for 1-10 V/ lighting ...
(DALI).
The technology uses a single byte to communicate the lighting level (0-255 or 0x00-0xFF). DSI was the first use of digital communication in lighting control, and was the precursor to
DALI
Dali or Dalí may refer to:
Chinese history
* Kingdom of Dali (937–1253 AD), centered in modern Yunnan
* Kingdom of Nanzhao or Dali, Kingdom of Dali's predecessor state
* Dali, Emperor Daizong of Tang's third and last regnal period (766–779)
...
.
Advantages
* Its simple nature makes it straightforward to understand,
implement, and diagnose, while its low voltage means it typically runs along relatively thin cables.
* Because each device has its own wire to the
controller
Controller may refer to:
Occupations
* Controller or financial controller, or in government accounting comptroller, a senior accounting position
* Controller, someone who performs agent handling in espionage
* Air traffic controller, a person ...
(rather than being part of a
network
Network, networking and networked may refer to:
Science and technology
* Network theory, the study of graphs as a representation of relations between discrete objects
* Network science, an academic field that studies complex networks
Mathematics
...
) it has no need of an address to be set, so can be replaced simply by unplugging the faulty one and plugging in the new.
* It dims to off, so does not require mains switching equipment to turn them off.
Disadvantages
* It requires one wire per control channel so a sophisticated system could have hundreds of wires, thereby making diagnoses of problems difficult.
* It is a