In our climbing gym (https://www.wupperwaende.de), I set up Home Assistant to monitor energy consumption and our solar system.
We use the atios smartcore DALI Controller to control the outdoor lighting of our club hall. All the lamps already had DALI controllers, but they were never actually controlled through them instead, they were simply switched on and off via a standard light switch. Atios asked me to summarize our experience; we did not receive any payment or hardware.
The setup is really straightforward. No additional DALI software or dongle is required to address or configure the luminaires. Everything is handled through the controller’s web interface.
This is a major advantage, especially in a club environment where different people may tinker with the system from time to time. Changes and adjustments can be made quickly and without specialized knowledge.
Thanks to Matter support, new DALI devices automatically appear in Home Assistant. This works reliably.
For us, this means:
- install or replace new lights (we already had two defective ones)
- assign an address and configure them via the smartcore
- they automatically show up in Home Assistant
Our main motivation was energy savings. In the past, it often happened that all outdoor lighting was switched on regardless of whether all areas actually needed illumination.
Now we can:
- switch on specific lamps after sunset and automatically turn off the lights after the hall closes
- dim individual areas separately
- define lighting scenes depending on the need
Especially in winter, when it gets dark early, this makes a noticeable difference. Not everything is lit up by default anymore—only what is actually needed. This leads to measurable savings in electricity costs.
One downside is that DALI groups or broadcast commands cannot be used in a way that allows all lamps to be switched off simultaneously via a true DALI broadcast. However, this is more a limitation of Home Assistant, as devices first need to be switched on before they can be turned off turning them off directly is not possible. We have now defined a scene for this, but you have to remember to include all lamps, where a broadcast would have been more elegant.
Unfortunately, the controller is quite expensive (€600), but it was purchased as part of an energy-saving funding project.
By the way, you can view the web interface here: Atios Web Configurator
