Artistic Licence is launching Art-Osc, which is an open domain, free-of-charge protocol enabling the transport of DALI lighting control data over an ethernet network.
The DALI (Digital Addressable Lighting Interface) standard provides a popular means of controlling ballasts that do not require fast special effects. It operates over low cost and simple wiring, and only limited to 64 devices per circuit. DALI has lacked a standardized and open method of integration into larger networks, till now.
Art-Osc solves these problems by providing a non-proprietary method to transfer the DALI language over a network, putting this into numbers translates into control over a billion DALI ballasts. Historically, the situation bears close analogy with the invention of Art-Net, an ethernet protocol designed to overcome the channel restriction of DMX512 while still utilizing its structure.
In addition to transporting DALI over ethernet networks, Art-Osc has two other main areas of application, the RDM visualisation and network remote control. While RDM allows a lighting controller or building management computer to report on equipment status, it is not designed to convey data in a user-friendly manner. Art-Osc solves this problem by enabling simple integration of the RDM data to smartphones or tablets.
Because Art-Osc sits upon the widely used OSC (Open Sound Control) standard, lighting users can benefit from numerous existing free or low-cost tools such as TouchOSC and Lemur for iPad and Android.
