 |
| Type | Public company |
|---|---|
| Industry | Lighting Control Manufacturer |
| Founded | 1987 in Sydney, Australia |
| Founder | John Gunton |
| Headquarters | Sydney, Australia, Mascot , Australia |
Area served | Worldwide |
| Parent | Signify N.V. |
| Website | https://www.dynalite.com/ |
Philips Dynalite (previously Dynalite) is a lighting control and automation system developed in Sydney, Australia by John Gunton in 1987.
In 2009, Dynalite was acquired by Philips Lighting, and henceforth took on its new name, Philips Dynalite. In 2018 Philips spun off its lighting department, which rebranded to become Signify N.V.
Philips Dynalite is Signify's global brand for connected lighting control and building automation. Its products are available globally through Signify's extensive network of Certified System Integrators (CSIs).
The Dynalite system consists of:
For the full list of products, view Philips Dynalite's product portfolio.
The network components are all used to set a system of Areas and Channels. Any given lighting, fan, louvre, and relay circuit is a Channel in an Area.
For example, a house might have 3 rooms. Each room is called an Area. The kitchen may contain overhead lights, a range-hood fan and lights over the bench. These three are called Channels.
Those Areas and Channels are in states called Presets. In Preset 1, typically, all lights etc. are fully on, in Preset 4, all of the lights are off. This is all customisable either by the programmer, or if it has been allowed, by the end user as well.
So, sending 'Area 3 Preset 4' will turn off the lights in Area 3 (room 3). Sending 'Area 3 Preset 2' will set the lights to a low level, which is customisable.
Channels can also be sent presets aside from the preset of the area to which they belong. 'Area 3 Preset 4' turns off the lights, then 'Area 3 Channel 7 Preset 1' will turn that light back on.
Dynalite components communicate using DyNet. The physical layer consists of a modified RS-485 TIA/EIA-485-A serial bus running along CAT5 cable, blue and blue/white carry the hot and cold signal respectively, orange and orange/white carry +12 V DC, green and green/white carry 0 V, Brown and Brown/white are unused. End of line termination is required [1]
DyNet 1 is the most commonly used protocol over the bus, being messages of 8 bytes of data, the 8th byte being a checksum. Data is sent at speed of 9600 baud, 8 bits, no parity, 1 stopbit (8N1). Commonly there are two types of message sent via DyNet 1: logical and physical. Logical messages talk to Areas and Channels, and physical messages talk directly to the devices. These 2 are typically called 1C and 5C messages, on account of the first byte of their message.
A 1C message consist of: [1C] [Area] [Data 1] [OpCode] [Data 2] [Data 3] [Join] [Checksum]
Area is the Logical Area the message is to control.
OpCode defines the Action to be taken on the Area.
Join is a bitswitch which can be used to filter out selected channels.
An OpCode of 00 to 03 means the action is to send the given area into preset 1 to 4 plus 8 times the value of Data 3 over the time specified by Data 1 and Data 2.
An OpCode of 0A to 0D means the action is to send the given area into preset 5 to 8 plus 8 times the value of Data 3 over the time specified by Data 1 and Data 2.
That gives a possibility of 8 × 255 presets. A usual job uses 4 to 8, and generally preset 4 is reserved to 'Off' or 'all to 0%'.
DyNet 2 is used mainly to upload data to devices on the network. It allows larger messages of data to be sent at higher speeds (115200 baud), significantly reducing lag time.
Each device contains its own programmable logic controller and follows the peer-to-peer model, the main advantage of this is that there is no reliance on a single central controller, the system is capable of a high level of resilience and therefore well suited to situations where total failure could be a safety issue, such as lighting systems in public places.
The 'Message on Change' system only sends a message every time a lighting state is to change, as opposed to the DMX protocol, which is constantly streaming the entire data-map. This allows for much more devices on a single bus, but also leads to missed messages - as below.
As most of the DyNet is openly published, it is possible to integrate with third party devices.
The DyNet protocol offers no error correction or transmission control, each network message is sent on a 'best effort' basis. This means that if a transmitted message is corrupted or missed by a receiving device, there is nothing to pick up that the message was not received, but also makes for much faster communication and response to user input in ideal situations. The design opens the possibility of devices missing messages. In the case of a user pushing a button to turn on a light, this does not present a large problem as the user will probably notice and press the button again, but if it is an automated message say, from a timeclock, there is potential for an important message turning on outside lights of a shopping center to be missed. The usual workaround for this is to simply send the important message twice or more.
The previous Dynalite programming software (dLight 2) commonly in use up to 2011, (and still sometimes used for older equipment) was built progressively upon a Windows 3.11 application, and hides many undocumented keyboard shortcuts which are necessary to program a system.
The Envision editor was launched in 2010 and is designed to be more intuitive and easy to use. It is designed for programmers - it is not expected that end users will be able to set up their own systems, one needs training (usually free) provided by Dynalite distributors.
A selection of large scale installations of DyNet in buildings:
X10 is a protocol for communication among electronic devices used for home automation (domotics). It primarily uses power line wiring for signaling and control, where the signals involve brief radio frequency bursts representing digital information. A wireless radio-based protocol transport is also defined.
I2C (Inter-Integrated Circuit; pronounced as “eye-squared-C”), alternatively known as I2C or IIC, is a synchronous, multi-master/multi-slave (controller/target), packet switched, single-ended, serial communication bus invented in 1982 by Philips Semiconductors. It is widely used for attaching lower-speed peripheral ICs to processors and microcontrollers in short-distance, intra-board communication.
KNX is an open standard for commercial and residential building automation. KNX devices can manage lighting, blinds and shutters, HVAC, security systems, energy management, audio video, white goods, displays, remote control, etc. KNX evolved from three earlier standards; the European Home Systems Protocol (EHS), BatiBUS, and the European Installation Bus.
DMX512 is a standard for digital communication networks that are commonly used to control lighting and effects. It was originally intended as a standardized method for controlling stage lighting dimmers, which, prior to DMX512, had employed various incompatible proprietary protocols. It quickly became the primary method for linking controllers to dimmers and special effects devices such as fog machines and intelligent lights.
Modbus is a data communications protocol originally published by Modicon in 1979 for use with its programmable logic controllers (PLCs). Modbus has become a de facto standard communication protocol and is now a commonly available means of connecting industrial electronic devices.
A lighting control console is an electronic device used in theatrical lighting design to control multiple stage lights at once. They are used throughout the entertainment industry and are normally placed at the front of house (FOH) position or in a control booth.
Insteon is a proprietary home automation (domotics) system that enables light switches, lights, thermostats, leak sensors, remote controls, motion sensors, and other electrically powered devices to interoperate through power lines, radio frequency (RF) communications, or both. It employed a dual-mesh networking topology in which all devices are peers and each device independently transmits, receives, confirm and repeats messages. Like other home automation systems, it had been associated with the Internet of things.
Building automation(BAS), also known as building management system (BMS) or building energy management system (BEMS), is the automatic centralized control of a building's HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning), electrical, lighting, shading, access control, security systems, and other interrelated systems. Some objectives of building automation are improved occupant comfort, efficient operation of building systems, reduction in energy consumption, reduced operating and maintaining costs and increased security.
A lighting control system incorporates communication between various system inputs and outputs related to lighting control with the use of one or more central computing devices. Lighting control systems are widely used on both indoor and outdoor lighting of commercial, industrial, and residential spaces. Lighting control systems are sometimes referred to under the term smart lighting. Lighting control systems serve to provide the right amount of light where and when it is needed.
CANopen is a communication protocol and device profile specification for embedded systems used in automation. In terms of the OSI model, CANopen implements the layers above and including the network layer. The CANopen standard consists of an addressing scheme, several small communication protocols and an application layer defined by a device profile. The communication protocols have support for network management, device monitoring and communication between nodes, including a simple transport layer for message segmentation/desegmentation. The lower level protocol implementing the data link and physical layers is usually Controller Area Network (CAN), although devices using some other means of communication can also implement the CANopen device profile.
EtherCAT is an Ethernet-based fieldbus system developed by Beckhoff Automation. The protocol is standardized in IEC 61158 and is suitable for both hard and soft real-time computing requirements in automation technology.
Digital Addressable Lighting Interface (DALI) is a trademark for network-based products that control lighting. The underlying technology was established by a consortium of lighting equipment manufacturers as a successor for 1-10 V/0–10 V lighting control systems, and as an open standard alternative to several proprietary protocols. The DALI, DALI-2 and D4i trademarks are owned by the lighting industry alliance, DiiA.
Universal Powerline Bus (UPB) is a proprietary software protocol developed by Powerline Control Systems for power-line communication between devices used for home automation. Household electrical wiring is used to send digital data between UPB devices via pulse-position modulation.
Digital Serial Interface (DSI) is a protocol for the controlling of lighting in buildings. It was created in 1991 by Austrian company Tridonic and is based on Manchester-coded 8-bit protocol, data rate of 1200 baud, 1 start bit, 8 data bits, 4 stop bits, and is the basis of the more sophisticated protocol Digital Addressable Lighting Interface (DALI).
oBIX is a standard for RESTful Web Services-based interfaces to building control systems. oBIX is about reading and writing data over a network of devices using XML and URIs, within a framework specifically designed for building automation.
A time switch is a timer that operates an electric switch controlled by the timing mechanism.
ONE-NET is an open-source standard for wireless networking. ONE-NET was designed for low-cost, low-power (battery-operated) control networks for applications such as home automation, security & monitoring, device control, and sensor networks. ONE-NET is not tied to any proprietary hardware or software, and can be implemented with a variety of low-cost off-the-shelf radio transceivers and micro controllers from a number of different manufacturers.
Consumer Electronics Control (CEC) is a feature of HDMI designed to control HDMI connected devices by using only one remote controller; so, individual CEC enabled devices can command and control each other without user intervention, for up to 15 devices. For example, a television set remote controller can also control a set-top box and a DVD player.
RL78 Family is a 16-bit CPU core for embedded microcontrollers of Renesas Electronics introduced in 2010.
DyNet is the communications network and communications protocol for Dynalite lighting automation and building automation. It is now part of Philips Lighting.