Philips Dynalite (DyNet)

Control of Philips / Signify Dynalite lighting systems over the DyNet 1 binary protocol, reached through a Dynalite Ethernet gateway that bridges the DyNet trunk onto TCP. Drives area presets and individual channel levels, and — because DyNet is a broadcast bus — tracks state passively, so a wall-panel press updates GEM without polling.

Dynalite is the lighting control platform behind a very large share of commercial fit-outs (hotels, offices, hospitals, retail) in EMEA and APAC. This driver targets the third-party integration path, not commissioning: the area/channel map is authored in System Builder by the Dynalite engineer and transcribed into GEM zone addresses.

Prerequisites

• A Dynalite Ethernet gateway on the LAN — PDEG, PDEB, PDDEG-S, or a PDTS v2 touchscreen acting as a bridge — with a DyNet-over-TCP port enabled.
• The System Builder project (or a printed schedule) giving the area and channel numbers for each load. There is no discovery on DyNet; this map has to come from the commissioning engineer.
• Network reachability from GEM to the gateway on the configured port (50000 by default).

DyNet, not DyNet Text

Dynalite gateways can serve either raw DyNet frames or the human-readable DyNet Text protocol on a given port. This driver speaks binary DyNet 1 only. If the port is configured for DyNet Text the socket will connect happily and then nothing will work — see Troubleshooting.

Setup steps

1. In System Builder, open the gateway's port configuration and confirm the connection type is TCPv4 and the protocol is raw DyNet. Note the port number — the default is 50000.
2. Go to System → Devices → Add Device and choose the Philips Dynalite (DyNet) driver (registry key philips_dynalite).
3. Set Gateway IP (ip) to the gateway's LAN address, and Gateway TCP Port (port) if it is not 50000.
4. Leave Join Byte (join) at 255 unless the Dynalite engineer has assigned a filtered join level for third-party control.
5. Create one Zone per load under the Lights subsystem, and set the zone Address per the zone address format below.
6. From the Script Console, run get_level against a channel zone (or get_preset against an area zone) and watch the device log for an inbound report frame. That round trip confirms the gateway is bridging the trunk in both directions.

Zone address format

Address form	Example	Meaning
area.channel	2.3	Area 2, channel 3 — a single dimmable or switched load. The usual case.
area.* (or area.all)	2.*	Every channel in area 2. Sends the broadcast channel byte 0xFF.
area	2	Area-wide zone with no channel. Driven by preset recall and the area-level opcodes.

Channels are 1-based in GEM and in System Builder; the driver converts to the 0-based value DyNet puts on the wire. Areas are 0–255, where area 0 is the global broadcast area — sending to it affects every area on the network, so use it deliberately.

Attribute reference

Scope	Attribute	Direction	Notes
device	ip	required	LAN address of the Dynalite Ethernet gateway.
device	port	optional	DyNet-over-TCP port. Default 50000.
device	join	optional	Join byte stamped on every outgoing frame. Default 255.
device	default_fade	optional	Fade in seconds applied when a command carries no fade argument. Default 1.
device	status_interval	optional	Resync sweep in ms. Default 60000.
device	command_throttle	optional	Minimum ms between outgoing frames. Default 150.
zone	level	runtime	Current level, 0–100 percent. Written by the driver.
zone	state	runtime	on / off, derived from level. Written by the driver.
zone	preset	runtime	Last preset seen for the area. Written by the driver.

Commands

Command	Arguments	Notes
on	address	Fades to 100%.
off	address	Fades to 0%. An area-only address uses the area-off opcode instead.
set_level	address, level, fade	level is 0–100 percent. fade in seconds, optional.
stop_fade	address	Halts an in-progress fade and holds the current level.
preset	address, preset, fade	Recalls an area preset. 1-based — preset 4 is 4.
area_off	address, fade	Sends every channel in the area to 0%.
get_level	address	Requests the channel's current level.
get_preset	address	Requests the area's current preset.
get_zones	—	Reports the Dynalite zones configured in GEM and re-polls each.
raw_packet	area, data1, opcode, data2, data3	Escape hatch for opcodes this driver does not wrap. Decimal values; join and checksum are added for you.

Protocol notes

A DyNet 1 logical message is a fixed 8 bytes:

[0x1C] [Area] [Data1] [OpCode] [Data2] [Data3] [Join] [Checksum]

The checksum is the negative 8-bit two's complement sum of the first seven bytes. Worked example — recall preset 4 in area 1 over 2 seconds:

1C 01 03 65 64 00 FF 18
      ^^ preset 4, sent 0-based as 3
         ^^ opcode 0x65, linear preset
            ^^ ^^ fade word 0x0064 = 100 x 20ms = 2s
                  ^^ join
                     ^^ checksum

Two encoding details are worth knowing when reading logs:

• Levels are inverted. 0x01 is 100% and 0xFF is 0%. The driver converts to and from percent, so integrators only ever see 0–100.
• Fade times use different units per opcode. Preset and area fades use a 16-bit word in 20 ms units. Channel fades carry a single rate byte, so the driver picks the opcode to match the requested duration: 0x71 up to 25.5 s (0.1 s steps), 0x72 up to 255 s (1 s steps), 0x73 up to 22 min (1 min steps).

Opcodes decoded from the bus: 0x60 report channel level, 0x62 report preset, 0x65 linear preset, 0x00–0x03 and 0x0A–0x0D classic presets 1–8, 0x04 area off, 0x71/0x72/0x73 channel fades, 0x79 area fade.

Known limitations

• No discovery. get_zones reports what GEM already has configured. DyNet offers no way to enumerate areas, channels, or preset names — that lives in the System Builder project.
• Logical frames only. Device-addressed frames (sync 0x5C) and longer DyNet 2 messages are skipped by the resync scan rather than misparsed. Systems driven purely over DyNet 2 are out of scope for this driver.
• Preset names are not available. Presets are addressed by number. Names are a System Builder concept and never appear on the wire.
• A channel report does not update an area.* zone. If you address a zone as 2.*, per-channel reports for area 2 will not write to it — only area-wide frames will. Use area.channel zones where you want per-load feedback.
• Area-off fade units are assumed. The 16-bit fade word on the area-off opcode (0x04) is sent in the same 20 ms units as preset fades. This is consistent with the documented preset behaviour but has not been confirmed against hardware; if area-off fades come out wrong, use set_level with an explicit fade instead.

Troubleshooting

Symptom	Check
Socket connects, commands do nothing	The gateway port is almost certainly serving DyNet Text rather than raw DyNet. Fix the port mode in System Builder — this driver speaks binary frames only.
Commands work, state never updates	The gateway may be bridging one way only. Run get_level on a channel zone and look for an inbound 0x60 frame in the device log. If nothing arrives, revisit the gateway's trunk configuration.
Some channels ignore commands	Those channels are probably filtered by join. Ask the Dynalite engineer which join level third-party control should use, and set the join attribute to match.
Levels look inverted	Something upstream is passing raw DyNet bytes instead of percent. Pass 0–100 to set_level and let the driver do the conversion.
Commands drop under load	Raise command_throttle. The trunk behind the gateway is a slow serial bus; below roughly 100 ms frames start getting lost.
Preset recalls but levels lag	Expected. A preset changes levels without the controller reporting each one, so the driver re-requests channel levels about a second later.

Related

• Devices — device and attribute administration.
• Zones — zone creation and address assignment.