node-red-contrib-dali-sensor 0.4.0

Node-RED node for parsing DALI sensor data and outputting motion and lux

npm install node-red-contrib-dali-sensor

Node-RED dali-sensor Node

Overview

The DALI Sensor node is designed for use with the Lunatone DALI-2 IoT Gateway to easily filter and process DALI-2 sensor signals inside Node-RED.
It allows you to monitor occupancy (motion), lux levels, and lux alarms from connected DALI-2 sensors, with filtering by short address and instance type/number.

This node is ideal when you want to:

• Extract and use specific motion or lux data from the DALI bus.
• Convert raw DALI sensor frames into clean, meaningful outputs.
• Optionally add automatic delayed Off logic for motion detection.

Features

• Short address filtering — Only process messages from the target DALI-2 device.
• Scheme selection — Supports both:
  • Device scheme (instance types)
  • Device/Instance scheme (instance numbers)
• Instance mapping — Configure which instance is motion and which is lux.
• Lux setpoint — Auto-generate a Lux Alarm output when lux drops below the threshold.
• Boolean or string outputs — Select "true"/"false" or "On"/"Off" for binary outputs.
• Auto-Off option — Motion turns On immediately, then Off after a non-resettable delay.
• Only send on change (new) — Each output is sent only when its value changed, instead of on every sensor frame.

Outputs

The node has three outputs:

Auto-Off Feature

When Auto Off is enabled:

• "On" is emitted immediately on motion detection.
• First "Off" starts a delayed turn-off (non-resettable).
• Further Off frames during countdown are ignored.
• An On during countdown cancels the pending Off.
• Default delay is 30 seconds (configurable).
• msg.delay (in ms) on the message that starts the countdown can override the timeout.
• Status shows a live countdown.

If Node-RED restarts during a countdown, the node will re-arm the remaining delay and emit Off when it expires.

Only Send on Change

DALI-2 sensors re-report their state every few seconds, and by default every frame re-emits Motion, Lux Value and Lux Alarm even when nothing changed. Wired straight to an NHC2 output, that means a write every few seconds per sensor — enough to hit the Hobby API rate limit and make the controller re-evaluate everything that depends on those flags.

When On Change is enabled:

• Each output is sent only when its payload differs from the last one sent on that output.
• A Motion frame no longer re-sends Lux Value / Lux Alarm (and vice versa).
• The first frame after a deploy or restart is always sent, so downstream devices re-sync.
• Auto-Off still emits its delayed Off (it is a change).

Configuration

Example Flow

[
    {
        "id": "dali-sensor-example",
        "type": "dali-sensor",
        "name": "Office Motion & Lux",
        "shortAddress": "1",
        "motionInstance": 0,
        "luxInstance": 1,
        "luxSetpoint": 400,
        "useBoolean": true,
        "enableAutoOff": true,
        "autoOffDelaySec": 30,
        "wires": [
            ["debug-motion"],
            ["debug-lux"],
            ["debug-alarm"]
        ]
    }
]