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