Dali card not finding ballast

[Porter.painter]

Hi everyone,

I think I have a fault with my Dali card.

I have recently purchased some new Phillips Dali ballast (hf-r dali 124 tl5 220-240).

When I try to search for the new ballast to number them, the ghl screen flashes up "please wait" for a very short period of time (less than half a second) then just reads "ready, found :0".

The dali card had previously been used successfully with Osram Dali ballast, but when I tried to reconnect one of those ballast and number it, the same situation occurs with a short "please wait" message, then no ballast found.

Previously I remember the ghl searching for the ballast for a few seconds, and then numbering the number of ballast found.

I tried changing the illumination channels on the new Phillips ballast (even though they had not been located) and this turns the ballast off, so I am confident that there is a signal going to the ballast and there is no wiring fault.

Does anyone have any ideas on how to correct this, or has my Dali card stopped working?

Thank you
Andy

[Andyos]

Hi Andy, which version of firmware do you have on your DALI card? IIRC, there are two versions and the older one cannot be updated (I have the older one V1.00) and I seem to recall that there was a problem with the earlier one with ballasts that weren't quite running to the DALI Standard but I may be wrong....Regards, Andy

[Blahenazo]

I also have an 'old' dali if I recall correctly => and it could be seen as an unless card

[Porter.painter]

Hi Andy,

Hope you're well mate. I've had the dali card a couple of years, and when you power up the ghl it reads Dali 1.00 so I guess it's th old version.

What I don't understand is that it no longer finds Dali ballast which it has previously worked with? Could this be because I've update the ghl firmware to 5.10 recently and this is the first time I've used the Dali card since switching to 5.10.

So is the concencus that I need a new Dali card?? I am concerned that if I buy a new Dali card that it may still not work and I have wasted £60. Also a little disappointed that the original dali card wasn't future-proof

[Andyos]

Hi Andy, very well mate thanks and you? I was annoyed myself that my card wasn not the "shipping" version and couldn't be upgraded but it saw my Osram ballasts at the time. Since the tank breakdown I haven't got any DALI ballasts so can't test it....if you are over my way anytime you're more than welcome to bring a ballast to test with mine...Regards, Andy

[Porter.painter]

I'm good thanks Andy

Really don't know what to do...don't understand why it now wont see ballast that it previously worked with though??

[Porter.painter]

I've bought a new Dali card and everything is working again.

I am a bit disappointed that the original version that I had bought is now defunct

[Porter.painter]

*correction*

I have just retried my original Dali v1.0 card with a Osram quicktronic ballast and it does work with that...it just seems that the old card is not compatible with the new Phillips ballast whereas the new Dali card does work, although I think I need to spend some time establishing the correct frequency as the Phillips isn't dimming up and down correctly at the moment.

[Matthias]

the problem was that the communication timing of some DALI ballasts aren't 100% according to the specification but we programmed our PLM-DALI according to these official specs

after we had to learn that some manufacturers are ignoring some of the standards we changed our firmware of the PLM-DALI, it is now more tolerant for bad timings of the connected ballasts

[Andyos]

Hi Matthias, I found that my v1 DALI card worked with the Osram ballasts - am I correct in thinking it is not possible to update the firmware of the DALI card? If not, is there any kind of trade-in or replacement for people that bought the first generation cards? Regards, Andy