Adding Blind Control To Your Lighting Control System

Lighting Control systems need to be able to seamlessly control other devices in a building and automated blinds are now common place, but how exactly do we control motorised blinds?

Methods of control

There are are usually a number of different ways that a Lighting Control System can interface to and control motorised blinds. Here are the most common.

• Direct 240V control – This is where the lighting control system provides a controller that powers and directly drives each 240V blind motor up and down as required. This is usually done with two special relays that are configured with an interlock to ensure both relays cannot be activated at the same time (e.g. so both up and down can’t be activated). In most cases blind motors can not be run in parallel, so a Lighting Control System channel (two special relays) will be required for each blind motor being used. Connection from the controller to the blind motor is typically a four wire system (Up, Down, Neutral & Earth).

Zencontrols Blind controller can directly control up to four 240V blind motors and can directly interface to a BMS for simple control from either the BMS or the Lighting Control System.  

Zencontrols New DALI Blind Control Module can be connected directly to a 240v blind motor and is simply either connected directly to the DALI  line like any other DALI device (light fitting etc) or can connect wirelessly to a Wireless DALI+ application controller.

• Blind Group Controller Hard wired – This is where the blind supplier will supply what is known as a group controller, blind motors (usually up to 4 motors) may then be wired individually back to the group controller. The lighting control system will then still need a controller with volt free contacts to initiate the group controller to drive the motors up or down either individually or as a group.

Right: Typical Somfy 4 motor Group Controller

Left: The Dynalite DDRC810DT can directly control up to four 240v blind motors or can act as four separate volt free contacts for use with Blind Group controllers.

• Blind Group Controller Wireless – Unlike the wired solution above, the Blind Supplier may opt to use blind motors with a wireless connection back to a wireless group controller. These group controllers are usually limited to the number of groups they can have, (16 groups for the Somfy RTS controller) but each group can have several motors. The lighting control system can often interface with these types of group controllers using a high level interface such as an RS485 Module.

The Zencontrol DALI 2 Application controller has an RS485 port on board and can interface directly with an RS485 enabled Blind Group controller to control up to 16 groups per controller.

The Simplest & Most Cost Effective?

Having been involved with thousands of projects that included Blind control, in our opinion the simplest and most cost effective way, currently, is direct control of simple 240v blind motors.

This way the stakeholders (architect, builder, engineers etc) can simply specify that the blinds are to be supplied with standard 240V blind motors and the control can be left to the overall control system (lighting or BMS system).

This simplifies the process immensely and takes away a lot of confusion on who is providing what.

This also provides the most cost effective approach as basic 240v blind motors are relatively inexpensive and this eliminates the doubling up of controls by removing the need for Blind group controllers, which can save a significant amount. 

Lighting Control panels can be added to any space for simple manual control

For more detailed information or for assistance with you next project please contact us.