ETC’s DALI 2 Gateway and the End of 0 10V

0:19 Welcome to the show, Lacey. I want to start with the thing that is quietly dying in a lot of North American buildings. Zero CU, 10V dimming and not dead overnight. Not dramatic, but you can feel the shift. For decades it was the default because it was familiar, cheap enough, and it checked the code compliance box. But now you've got LED everywhere, clients asking for more flexibility, facility teams wanting systems that still behave the same way 5 or 10 years later, and suddenly, because we've always done it that way, is not much of an argument. The 010V part is exactly where I think some people in our world tune out because they hear numbers and go OK nerd corner. But the five or ten years later point that hits in hospitality especially, nobody wants a ballroom or corridor that dims one way on opening day and then gets weird and patchy over time, so ETC.

1:15 Dropping this on 14th April 2026 feels like them saying hey the building side is catching up to the fact that LEDs are digital whether your control philosophy is or not. Exactly, and the product is ET CS response Daily Gateway MK2. Very straightforward job. It converts DMX or SACN to daily. So if you already live in a DMX ish or networked control world, this is the bridge into Dali. It's DIN mounted, which matters because this is not some theatrical rack room diva. It's meant to live neatly in an architectural electrical environment, and each gateway supports 4 subnets, each with an integrated bus power supply.

1:58 Wait, 4 subnets with integrated bus power in each one? That's the part facility people are going to remember. Because integrated bus power means one less external thing to wrangle, right? Not magic, just fewer pieces, cleaner install, less of that cabinet spaghetti that makes everybody grumpy. Cabinet spaghetti, yes. Highly technical term, but yes. The bigger idea here is less about 1 box and more about what Dali is doing philosophically. ET CS release puts it pretty cleanly. LE DS are digital devices and Dali control acknowledges them for what they are. With 010V you're basically sending a fluctuating voltage and hoping every fixture responds nicely. With daily, you're sending clear digital commands and the driver handles the response consistently and predictably. OK, let me try to explain it back and you tell me where I'm mangling it.

2:52 Zarcho 10V is sort of like nudging a crowd and hoping everyone steps the same distance. Dolly is more like saying you 3 go to exactly here. Is that too simplistic? No, that's actually pretty good. Maybe a little brutal to 010V, but fair. And that precision shows up in the stuff people actually see better. Low end, dimming, less flicker, colour temperature, staying more consistent across long runs. That last one matters a lot more than people think. Because if you've got a corridor, lobby, airport zone, healthcare floor, whatever, and one end feels cooler or visually off from the other, people may not know why it looks bad, but they know it looks bad. The long runs phrase from the release is the one that stuck with me because that's not a lab demo. That's real.

3:41 Buildings, hallways, guest room floors, office wings, and low end dimming. Man, if you've ever been in a restaurant or event space where the last 20% of dimming is just ugly, you don't forget it. Smooth low end is one of those things nobody compliments out loud, but everybody notices when it's missing, right? Good control disappears, bad control becomes the story. And dally to certification matters here because it adds a layer of confidence. Not just we say it works, but certification through third party verification. That is huge when you're talking about systems that may outlive the people who installed them. Somebody's got to maintain this stuff years later.

4:23 Which is why this announcement feels timely, not flashy timeline. Timely, practical, timely. Buildings are asking for smarter operation. LE DS already want digital control and ET CS basically saying here's a DIN mounted bridge, 4 subnets, integrated power, web interface for setup and status, and a certified way to stop pretending analog is still the best answer for everything. OK so if I'm the person signing checks I'm asking the annoying question. Does daily actually save money or is this one of those better in theory things where the invoice still hurts good? Question ET CS point is that daily drivers typically cost about the same as their zero to 10 V equivalents, so the savings aren't necessarily in the driver itself.

5:06 The savings are everything around it. Fewer wires, less conduit, only the control devices you actually need, and lower labor. And the math gets better as the number of zones goes up. Their release says a single daily control bus can support up to 64 drivers and multiple control groups. Up to 64 drivers on one control bus. That's the number. That's where the zone complexity part starts making sense to me, because once you get into a hotel, residential, high rise school, or anything with a bunch of spaces that want different behavior, the wiring alone can become its own side quest. A miserable side quest. Yes, and that's why ETC specifically calls out hospitality spaces and residential high rises. As zone counts increase, Dali becomes more cost effective. Not because one magic line item drops to 0, but because complexity stops multiplying your labor and material quite so aggressively.

6:04 I think people in production sometimes forget how important labor is in permanent install math. In live events, we'll throw bodies at a problem for load in and then everybody goes home. In a building. If your design creates extra conduit runs and extra devices in every area, that cost doesn't feel sexy, but it is very real. And the benefits keep going after install. This is the part facility teams will care about. Daily systems can report when a driver goes offline or when a fixture fails, often before anyone notices. In a large building, that visibility saves time and labour. You're not sending someone on a scavenger hunt through an office tower or hospital wing trying to figure out which peace quietly died.

6:46 Offline driver reporting is such an unglamorous phrase, but for an airport or healthcare facility, that's money. If you know which driver is offline, instead of dispatching somebody to wander around ceiling by ceiling, that's operational value, not just control geek value. Exactly, and then there's the standards piece. Darley is an open protocol and ETC emphasizes that all certified devices work with all compliant controllers. Darley 2 certification adds more confidence because of third party verification. That matters because customers hate lock in. Lighting systems should serve the building, not trap the building. Serve the building, not entrap it. That's probably my line of the episode, because anybody who's inherited a system where only one vendor's widget talks to one other vendor's widget knows how ugly that gets.

7:35 You're not buying a gadget, you're inheriting a future maintenance relationship. Yep. Now I do want to be careful here. None of this means DMX goes away, ETC, says it plainly. DMX continues to be essential where speed and theatrical precision are required. And thank goodness if I'm doing concert lighting, queue heavy performance, rapid timing changes, that kind of snap and precision DMX is still my language. Right, Nobody wants a rock show run like a polite office corridor. Different emotional needs. Exactly, but in schools, airports, offices, healthcare facilities, hospitality venues, those architectural and commercial spaces, ETC.

8:18 Lists Dali fits how buildings are designed, installed and operated. That's the divide. DMX for theatrical speed and precision. Dali for digital building friendly control when monitoring, grouping and long term consistency matter. And maybe that's the real take away. This isn't DMX versus Dali like a cage match. It's more like knowing when you need a race car and when you need a reliable fleet vehicle with good diagnostics. If ET, CS Gateway helps more people bridge from DMX or SACN into that Dolly World cleanly, then the interesting question isn't whether the industry changes, it's how many buildings are still going to choose analog just because it feels familiar.

9:01 Anyway, that's a pretty good thing to chew on. Thanks, Chris. Always a pleasure, see you next time. Oh, you get it. You make the specs so clear. Oh, la, la with music to your ears. Hey, hey, hey. Let's go. New gear, vibes, new tech jive. Your heads unite. We keep it live. Oh, yeah. The leaders gear. The leaders gear. We got it here.

9:42 Got it here.