CNC Control

Turn your phone into a wireless jog pendant for your CNC machine.

CNC Control sends keyboard shortcuts to your CNC sender software (UGS,
Candle, bCNC, Mach3, and anything else that listens to keyboard input)
over Bluetooth LE or WiFi - so you can jog, set zeros, run probes, and
hit your favorite macros from across the shop instead of being tied to
the laptop.

The phone never touches your CNC directly. A small companion piece - an
ESP32-S2/S3 dongle plugged into your PC's USB port, or a free Windows
receiver app - translates the phone's commands into real keystrokes.
Whatever your sender software does when you press a key, it'll do when
you tap a button in the app. Nothing to configure on the CNC side.


WHAT YOU GET

- Fully customizable button grid. Drag, resize, recolor, relabel.
Bind any keyboard key, function key, numpad key, or modifier
combination (Ctrl, Shift, Alt, GUI, Num Lock) to any button.

- Built-in D-pad and Z-pad widgets for natural X/Y/Z jogging. Press
and hold to jog continuously, release to stop. Configure the keys
each direction sends per profile.

- Multiple machine profiles. Set up one layout for your router,
another for your laser, another for your lathe - switch with a tap.

- Connect over BLE or WiFi. Both are supported simultaneously by the
ESP32 dongle. WiFi adds auto-discovery (no IP typing) and works
across rooms.

- One-tap WiFi setup. Type your home network credentials once, the
app handles joining the ESP32's setup AP, sending the credentials,
and finding it on your network afterwards. No phone-settings
juggling, no IP hunting.

- PC receiver alternative. If you'd rather not buy an ESP32, run the
free Windows receiver app on the same PC as your sender software.
Same protocol, same experience, no extra hardware.

- Works offline. No cloud, no account, no ads, no telemetry. Your phone
talks directly to the dongle or PC over your local network or BLE.


HARDWARE OPTIONS

You need ONE of:

- An ESP32-S2 or ESP32-S3 dongle (any USB-capable variant) flashed with
the free CNC Control firmware. Plugs into your PC's USB port and
appears as a regular USB keyboard. Open-source, $5–15 boards. Setup
instructions and firmware download on the developer's site.

- A Windows PC running the free CNC Control Receiver app. Single .exe,
no install, no .NET required. Lives in the system tray. Works on
Windows XP through 11.


WORKS WITH ANY KEYBOARD-DRIVEN CNC SOFTWARE

If you can jog your machine using keyboard keys today, CNC Control
works with it.

- Universal Gcode Sender (UGS)
- Candle
- bCNC
- Mach3 / Mach4
- LinuxCNC (via the Windows receiver running in a VM, or directly with
the ESP32 dongle plugged into the Linux machine)
- Estlcam
- OpenBuilds Control
- Lightburn

Anything else that accepts keyboard input works too.

More information can be found at https://d-n-g.github.io/guide.html