RGB.NET Device-Provider-Package for Sony PlayStation controllers (DualShock 4, DualSense, DualSense Edge).

Usage

This provider follows the default pattern and does not require additional setup.

surface.Load(PlayStationDeviceProvider.Instance);

The provider auto-detects connected controllers at load time and tracks hot-plug events for the lifetime of the provider — no rescan call is required when controllers are connected, disconnected, or paired/unpaired over Bluetooth.

Required SDK

This provider does not require an additional SDK. It speaks raw HID via the bundled HidSharp dependency (transitive through RGB.NET.HID); no Sony driver, no DS4Windows, no SignalRGB, no HidHide, no DualSenseX.

Supported devices

Controller	USB	Bluetooth	Notes
DualShock 4 v1 (PID 0x05C4)	yes	yes	Original "JDM-001/011"
DualShock 4 v2 (PID 0x09CC)	yes	yes	Revised "JDM-040/050/055"; lightbar visible through touchpad
DualShock 4 Wireless Adapter (PID 0x0BA0)	n/a	yes	Sony's official BT bridge — treated like DS4 v2
DualSense (PID 0x0CE6)	yes	yes	PS5 launch controller "CFI-ZCT1"
DualSense Edge (PID 0x0DF2)	yes	yes	Pro variant "CFI-ZCP1"

LED layout

LedId	DualShock 4	DualSense / DualSense Edge
Custom1	Lightbar (RGB)	Lightbar (RGB)
Custom2	—	Player indicator 1 (leftmost, monochrome)
Custom3	—	Player indicator 2 (monochrome)
Custom4	—	Player indicator 3 (monochrome)
Custom5	—	Player indicator 4 (monochrome)
Custom6	—	Player indicator 5 (rightmost, monochrome)

Custom1 is the lightbar on both controller families, so a host-side mapping for "Custom 1" carries sensible meaning across DS4 and DS5.

The DualSense player indicator LEDs are monochrome — they don't accept colour, only on/off. Any non-black colour written to Custom2..Custom6 lights the corresponding indicator at full brightness; pure black turns it off.

Limitations

Not exposed

• DualSense mic-mute LED. Deliberately left under firmware control. The mic-mute button mutes the microphone in hardware regardless of host activity — taking control of the LED would suppress visual feedback for an action that still happens. The provider does not set the MIC_MUTE_LED_CONTROL_ENABLE bit in the output report, so the firmware retains its default LED-tracks-mute-state behaviour.
• Rumble, adaptive triggers, haptics. This provider is lighting only. Output reports are written with rumble/audio/haptic fields zeroed and their corresponding valid_flag bits clear, so the firmware ignores those fields and games / Steam Input continue to drive them normally.
• Audio routing, headset volume, speaker volume, microphone gain. Same as above — fields are zeroed, flags are clear.

Coexistence

• Shared HID writes. Sony's HID gamepads accept shared output writes by default on Windows. Steam Input, a game's native lighting integration, and this provider can all write to the same controller — last writer wins per output report period. At the provider's 30Hz cadence intermittent setters (Steam profile changes, in-game state events) get overridden quickly enough that the net visual is the host app's colour.
• DS4Windows / reWASD with "Exclusive Mode" enabled hold the HID handle exclusive. The provider's TryOpen call fails (UnauthorizedAccessException / IOException) and the controller is skipped. Diagnostic message logged via Trace.WriteLine. Disable exclusive mode in those tools or close them to restore lighting.
• HidHide hiding the controller from non-allow-listed apps means the device never appears in the HidSharp enumeration — indistinguishable from "controller not connected". Add the host application to HidHide's allow-list.
• The DualSense lightbar boot animation. A fresh DualSense connection plays a fade-in animation that overrides host-driven colours until released. The provider sends the LIGHTBAR_SETUP_RELEASE_LEDS setup-control bit on the first output report after open, so host control takes effect immediately on connect.

Identity

• Device identity is derived from the OS device path, hashed to a 12-character hex tag and embedded in DeviceName. Stable across application restarts for the same physical controller in the same USB port / BT pairing. Switching the same controller between USB and Bluetooth produces a different DeviceName, so any host-side state keyed by device name won't auto-apply across transports.
• PlayStationDeviceInfo.SerialNumber is the path-derived hash, not the controller's HID serial descriptor. The descriptor query (HidDevice.GetSerialNumber) opens a separate read-info handle that throws DeviceIOException("Failed to get info.") on some hardware (DS4 v1 in particular, and any controller whose descriptor query is blocked by Steam / driver / power state). The path-derived hash is sufficient for identity and avoids the throw.

Platform

• Windows: each opened controller gets a second synchronous Win32 WriteFile handle (HidRawWriter) alongside the HidSharp-managed HidStream. All output reports go through the synchronous handle. HidSharp's HidStream.Write opens its handle with FILE_FLAG_OVERLAPPED and runs an asynchronous WriteFile + GetOverlappedResult dance internally; against the PlayStation USB HID minidriver that overlapped path returns failure on the second and subsequent writes, manifesting as "lightbar updates once and then freezes". The synchronous handle sidesteps the issue entirely. The two-handle overhead is negligible — Sony HID gamepads accept shared writes by default. If the second handle fails to open (rare), the queue falls back to HidStream.Write and logs a diagnostic.
• macOS / Linux: HidSharp's platform implementations don't use the same overlapped Windows code path, so the provider uses HidStream.Write directly. The controllers' BT output report formats and PnP semantics have only been verified on Windows; macOS and Linux are expected to work for USB but Bluetooth has not been tested. Reports welcome.
• On Linux, hid-playstation (kernel 5.12+) drives most lighting itself and may compete with this provider for output reports — last writer wins, but the kernel's player-LED logic may overwrite host-driven indicators.

Protocol references

The output report layouts are the same ones the Linux kernel hid-playstation driver uses. See drivers/hid/hid-playstation.c — specifically struct dualshock4_output_report_{usb,bt} and struct dualsense_output_report_common. The PlayStationCrc32 helper mirrors the same crc32_le seed-byte convention the kernel uses for BT reports.