DALI 'Identify' Behavior with DALI 1 Devices

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Issue

When sending an 'Identify' command from a Response DALI Gateway Mk2, DALI 1 devices may not respond to the command.

Explanation

The Response DALI Gateway Mk2 sends an 'Identify' command under these circumstances:

When the physical test button is pressed on the gateway, it sends 'Identify' to all devices in that subnet;
When the Identify button in the web UI is pressed for a short address, group, or port, it sends 'Identify' to that short address or to all addresses in that group or subnet.

Before DALI 2, the 'Identify' command was not fully defined in the DALI specification. Some DALI 1 devices do not implement the canonical 'Identify' command at all, and will not respond to it; these devices must be sent explicit intensity commands instead in order to blink on and off when desired. The 'Identify' command sent by the Response DALI Gateway Mk2 will have no effect on these devices.

In the DALI 2 specification (IEC 62386), the 'Identify' command (opcode 0x25) is defined in the following clauses:

Part 102, clause 9.14.3, identification of a device;

Part 102, clause 11.4.6, identify device.

Any DALI devices bearing the DALI 2 logo should implement the 'Identify' command properly, and thus should respond to an 'Identify' command issued by a Response DALI Gateway Mk2. The exact behavior that a device will exhibit when it receives an 'Identify' command is not defined in the DALI 2 specification, and may vary between different devices; however, some kind of visible effect should be produced.

Workarounds

When addressing DALI 1 devices via the discovery process in the web UI, you can use the 'Highlight' view instead of 'Identify'. The 'Highlight' operation works using explicit intensity minimum/maximum commands, so it will still produce a visible effect on DALI 1 devices that do not implement 'Identify'.