Digitally Addressable Digital Dimming Electronic Ballast Based on CAN Bus

This paper describes the design and implementation of a new digital dimming electronic ballast with the capability of being remotely controlled in a digital way, this is achieved through a novel lighting network based on Controller Area Network (CAN) bus standard. The proposed ballast was designed to drive a T5, 28 Watt s fluorescent lamp. The proposed functional performance was tested using an implemented lighting network system based on CAN 2.0A bus specification. The defined lighting network functions include dimming, turning on and off, and fault condition detection. The network control is made with a lighting system soft ware in a personal computer (PC) through one specific CAN node, being able to address up to 2047 individually controllable ballasts. According to the obtained results the proposed digital dimming electronic ballast performed the established functions successfully, meeting C class of the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) standard. The resulting system consists of a novel fully functional CAN bus lighting network with a reliable two wire remote control. Applications for this CAN Bus lighting network include lighting systems focused on design issues like lamp dimming control for electrical energy consumption savings and efficient lamp maintenance. Such application areas cover building lighting management, precision lighting eff ects,and studio lighting.

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