Our controller periodically checks light status and relays fault information to the cloud. These faults are exclusively reported by the driver/ballast—the control system only queries and reports this data.
No DALI command can cause lamp failure on a properly functioning device. The DALI protocol requires each device to enforce its own operational limits, meaning any failure is a device-level issue. Once configuration has been verified as correct (particularly, that the fixture that is connected to the driver is compatible), only the driver/control gear manufacturer can resolve the problem.
zencontrol frequently encounters device suppliers offering limited assistance and attempting to attribute driver/ballast malfunctions to our system until conclusively proven otherwise. Our position is unequivocal: our system cannot cause or influence lamp failures. We have confirmed your devices are reporting lamp failure.
We remain committed to helping our customers achieve results and will continue to do so. However, it's important to acknowledge that we incur substantial support costs troubleshooting and validating third-party hardware issues—costs that arise simply because we're the control system interfacing with these devices.
These issues appear in the Device Location Section.
An example of these issues:
A lamp failure and/or emergency lamp failure may indicate that a lamp has actually failed / is nearing failure and requires replacement, or that the ballast has encountered an issue requiring attention (such as an incompatible lamp).
If the device is not an emergency device, control gear failure is a manufacturer-specified fault that could result from adverse conditions, functionality issues, or incorrect setup.
Both issues are identified through the dali command QUERY STATUS. In these situations, the device must report an arc level of 255 for the actual level. This specific arc level cannot be requested by the controller.
It's important to understand that for emergency devices, the same conditions apply, plus the additional requirement that control gear failure must be reported if a function or duration test fails. For duration tests, this might simply indicate that the battery is not fully charged or is reaching the end of its service life. A function test might fail due to a missing lamp or other manufacturer-defined failure conditions.
The controller does not have the capacity to set these failures, nor is there a command that should cause these bits to be set. The dali standards do not allow for dangerous commands that could cause these states.
Possible sources
In our experience, such failures can come from:
- Bad/unsupported lamp fixture
- Incorrect configuration (check dip switches on device if present)
- Wiring
- Adverse conditions (undervoltage, overvoltage, thermal shutdown)
- Defective hardware
- Firmware issues in the driver/ballast (bugs)
- Other unknown issue with the driver/ballast
Diagnosis
If the issue is intermittent and the light is otherwise functional, it may indicate that the parameters governing whether a lamp has failed may be too stringent on the device.
If the issue persists and the worse still, the light is found to be now at an incorrect level or off, further investigation will be necessary.
The most basic test would be to reset the power to the device and monitor whether the failure is present on startup. If the failure is not present on startup, leave a dali monitor running on the controller to try to witness the transition into the failure state and establish what conditions are in play when the light is first found to be lamp failure. IE, were the lights just turned on/off? Had they been off for a large amount of time?
If possible, set the power on and system failure levels to unique values (ie, 253, 252) so that it can be easily discerned if a light has failed to a specific value. Note that if the power on level is set to a non "last level" value, any interrupt of power could potentially light up an entire building.
Corrective action
If the lamp is changing state as a result of the lamp failure and then coming out of lamp failure (common), you may be able to enable the correction field in the ECG view to have the controller automatically recover the arc level that it was previously at see:
Configuring correction behaviour
Further Technical Investigation
If you wish to verify for yourself that the failure is present, see the frequent polls of QUERY STATUS in the monitor
In the case above, the answers are decimal 11 (hexadecimal 0xB).
Bits 0, 1 and 3 are set. Bit 0 = Control Gear Failure, Bit 1 = Lamp Failure, Bit 3 = Limit error (the ballast has set its actual level to 255 which is an error state and above the max level of 254).
You may also see "ELM Mismatches" where the Expected Lighting Module reports when a light is not at the expected value it was previously set to
In this case, the device has set its ACTUAL LEVEL to 255 which is in an error state that cannot be set by any external device. Sending ARC power 255 does not send a device to arc level 255. It stops an active fade.
For emergency lamp failure, QUERY_FAILURE_STATUS gives failures in the emergency realm
In this case 200 = Binary 11001000 (Bits 3, 6 7 set)
| Bit Number | Failure |
| 0 | Circuit Failure |
| 1 | Battery Duration Failure |
| 2 | Battery Failure |
| 3 | Emergency Lamp Failure |
| 4 | Function Test Max Delay Exceeded |
| 5 | Duration Test Max Delay Exceeded |
| 6 | Function Test Failed |
| 7 | Duration Test Failed |
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