Pendant¶

The ncSender Wireless Pendant is a handheld controller for your CNC machine. It gives you a live position readout and hands-on control of jogging, zeroing, homing, tool changes, aux outputs, and running jobs — right at the machine, without reaching for the keyboard.

It connects to ncSender wirelessly through a small Wireless USB, so you can walk around the machine while you work.

Minimum versions

Wireless multi-device support (running the pendant alongside other wireless accessories on the same Wireless USB):
- ncSender — v2.0.63 or newer
- ncSender Pro — v2.0.117 or newer
- Pendant firmware — v1.0.16 or newer
- Wireless USB firmware — v0.3.0 or newer
Reliable direct-USB firmware update (per-chunk CRC + retry, catches the byte-drop failures older USB drivers occasionally introduced):
- ncSender — v2.0.106 or newer
- ncSender Pro — v2.0.168 or newer
- Pendant firmware — v1.0.20 or newer

See Wireless USB → for how to flash a Wireless USB update. If you're on older versions and only use the pendant on its own, no updates are needed.

Hardware¶

Pendant — a battery-powered handheld with a touch display, a jog knob (rotary encoder), three soft buttons, and a power button.
Wireless USB — a small USB stick that plugs into the computer running ncSender and links to the pendant wirelessly.

Getting connected¶

Plug the Wireless USB into the computer running ncSender.
Power on the pendant (hold the power button).
The pendant and Wireless USB pair automatically and the status bar shows the connection icon.

Once connected, the pendant mirrors your machine state in real time and any button you press acts on the machine immediately.

First-time pairing

If the pendant and Wireless USB have never been paired, open the Setup screen on the pendant and choose ESP-NOW → Scan to pair them. After the first pairing the connection is remembered and reconnects on its own.

The pairing screen shows whether the pendant is currently paired. Press Scan to search for a Wireless USB; press <Back to return to Setup.

Re-pairing the pendant¶

The first pairing is automatic and sticks — you shouldn't normally have to do it again. A few situations do call for a re-pair:

You flashed a major Wireless USB firmware update (e.g. v0.2.x → v0.3.x). Major-version firmware resets the Wireless USB's paired-device list.
You swapped in a different Wireless USB.
You want to move the pendant to a different Wireless USB / different machine.
The pairing has become unstable and reconnects don't recover.

Steps:

Clear the old pairing on the ncSender side. Click the pendant icon in the ncSender toolbar to open the Wireless USB dialog. Under Devices, click Unpair next to the pendant row and confirm.
Clear the old pairing on the pendant. On the pendant, go to Setup → ESP-NOW and choose Unpair if the pendant still shows itself as paired.
Open a new pairing window on ncSender. Back in the Wireless USB dialog, click + Pair New Device. A 30-second countdown starts — the Wireless USB is now listening for a new device to pair.
Scan on the pendant. While the ncSender window is still open, go to Setup → ESP-NOW → Scan on the pendant. The pendant finds the Wireless USB and completes the pairing.
Verify. The connection icon in the pendant's status bar should light up within a few seconds, and the pendant row in the ncSender Wireless USB dialog shows as Connected.

If the pendant doesn't find the Wireless USB

The 30-second window closes fast — start Scan on the pendant as soon as you click + Pair New Device in ncSender.
If the two firmwares are on mismatched major versions, pairing can silently fail. Make sure the pendant is on v1.0.16 or newer when the Wireless USB is on v0.3.x.
If it still won't pair, flash the latest Wireless USB firmware (see Wireless USB →) and try again.

Screens¶

The pendant has five screens you'll cycle through with the footer soft buttons: Jog, Aux & Tool Change, Job (auto-swapped in while a program runs), Info, and Setup.

Jog¶

The home screen — your live readout and jogging controls.

Status bar (top) shows, left to right: the active workspace (e.g. G54), the machine status (IDLE, RUN, HOLD, ALARM, …), the connection icon, and the battery level.

Position readout lists each axis (X, Y, Z) with its work position in large type and the machine position in smaller type underneath. The highlighted axis is the one the jog knob will move; the small number next to each axis label (e.g. 1.00) is the current jog step size.

Turn the jog knob to move the selected axis. The step size sets how far each click travels; turning faster moves faster. Z jog is speed-limited to what your machine can accelerate and decelerate cleanly, so fast rotations stay smooth and stop without overshooting the end of travel.

Changing the step size. Use the footer Prev / Next buttons to focus the axis you want, then press Select (middle) to cycle its step size. Available steps are 0.01, 0.1, and 1.0 — the current value shows next to the axis label (e.g. X 0.10). X and Y share the same step; Z has its own so you can jog Z fine while still moving XY in millimetres.

Buttons:

HOME — run the homing cycle.
XY0 / X0 / Y0 / Z0 — zero the work position for those axes at the current location.

Footer. Three soft buttons below the screen: Prev / Select / Next.

Prev / Next — cycle focus through axes and action buttons (Home, XY0, X0, Y0, Z0).
Select (labelled Step / Zero on this screen) — its action depends on what's focused: on an axis it cycles the step size, on an action button (Home / X0 / Y0 / Z0 / XY0) it fires that action.
Long-press Prev / Next — switch between screens.

Aux & Tool Change¶

The Aux & Tool Change screen groups everything you tend to reach for mid-job into one place: aux switches (coolant, air, laser, whatever you've wired up), the ATC slot picker, and manual tool-change actions.

Aux grid (top). A fixed 2 × 3 grid of aux buttons — always six cells so the layout doesn't shuffle when you add or remove outputs. Each configured aux shows its name, its M-command hint (e.g. M8, M64 P0), and an ON/OFF dot on the right; unconfigured cells show as Empty placeholders.

If you haven't defined any custom aux outputs, the pendant seeds the first two cells with Flood (M8) and Mist (M7) so coolant is always one tap away. Add or edit them in ncSender under Settings → Advanced → Auxiliary I/O; changes push to the pendant right away.

Slot picker (middle). Shows the target slot on the left (1 /6 — the current pick over your total slots) and the action on the right (LOAD or UNLOAD, with the loaded tool number T3 underneath). Rotate the jog knob to change the slot; long-press Select to load or unload.

The total slot count comes from whichever tool-change plugin you have set up — Pneumatic ATC, Rapid Change ATC, or Manual Tool Changer. Save the plugin's config and the pendant picks up the count automatically. With no tool-change plugin configured, the picker shows -/-.

Actions (bottom).

Manual — send an M6 (routed through whichever tool-change plugin is configured). Long-press to fire.
TLS — run the tool-length probe ($TLS). Long-press to fire.

Both require a long-press to fire, so a stray tap on the touchscreen mid-job can't accidentally launch a probe cycle or start a tool change.

Footer. Use Prev and Next to move the focus around the screen (the current selection is highlighted). Select activates the focused item — short-press for aux switches, long-press for items that need a hold to fire. Long-press Prev or Next to switch between screens.

Job¶

When you start a program, the pendant automatically switches to the Job screen so the controls you need while cutting are front and centre.

Feedrate / Spindle (top) — the live feed rate and spindle speed the machine is actually running.
Feed Override / Spindle Override — turn the jog knob to trim feed rate or spindle speed on the fly. Select which slider to adjust with the footer buttons; each shows the current override percentage.
Cycle — start / resume the program.
Pause — feed-hold the running program.
Stop — stop the program.

When the job finishes or you stop it, the pendant returns to the Jog screen automatically.

Info¶

The Info screen shows the pendant's current connection type, firmware version, and device name. It's the quickest way to check which firmware you're running — useful before and after a firmware update. Press Setup here to open the Setup screen.

Firmware version shown in the screenshot is a development build — the number on your pendant reflects the release you've actually installed.

Setup¶

The Setup screen holds the pendant's own preferences.

Show G-Code — when on, jog and command output from the pendant is echoed in ncSender's console. Off keeps the console quiet.
Idle Shutdown — how long the pendant waits, with no activity, before it powers itself off to save battery. Choose from 5 to 30 minutes. Turn the jog knob (or tap the row) to change the value.
ESP-NOW — pair or unpair with a Wireless USB.

Idle shutdown only runs on battery

While the pendant is plugged into USB (or charging), it stays on indefinitely. The idle timer only starts once it's running on battery, and any touch, button, or knob movement resets it.

Managing the pendant from ncSender¶

Two ncSender surfaces work with the pendant. They cover different things:

Surface	What it does
Wireless USB dialog (built-in)	Pair / unpair the pendant with the Wireless USB. Also handles Wireless USB activation and shows every device currently paired (pendant, AutoDustBoot, Smart RGB LED, …).
Pendant plugin	Activate the pendant itself, check the pendant's firmware version, and flash pendant firmware updates over the air.

Click the pendant icon in the ncSender toolbar (next to the connection status) to open the Wireless USB dialog. Everything to do with which devices are paired to your Wireless USB lives here — including the pendant.

For pendant activation and firmware updates, install the Pendant plugin from ncSender's plugin catalog. The plugin adds a Pendant entry to the tools menu; open it to see the current connection, activate the pendant, or check for and flash firmware updates.

Why is pendant firmware a plugin?

Previously the pendant had its own built-in dialog in ncSender. Splitting it into a plugin (like AutoDustBoot) lets pendant firmware ship on its own release cadence — you get new firmware and activation features without waiting for a full ncSender release, and users who don't own a pendant don't have unused UI in their toolbar.

Pendant firmware updates¶

The Pendant plugin can flash pendant firmware two ways:

Wireless (via the Wireless USB / dongle) — the default. Works whenever the pendant is paired and communicating. Slower than USB (small ESP-NOW frames, per-chunk ACKs) but very robust — the underlying transport already retries dropped chunks.
Direct USB — plug the pendant into the computer with a USB-C cable and the plugin uses that link instead. Faster (a full 1 MB firmware finishes in ~10 seconds) and does not need the Wireless USB to be paired.

Reliable USB flashing (v2.0.106 / v2.0.168 / firmware v1.0.20)

Older versions of the USB flash path could fail with a vague End failed message when the operating-system USB driver dropped a byte mid-transfer. On the current versions, the host and pendant negotiate a chunked protocol with per-chunk CRC-32 and retry, plus whole-image MD5 verification at the end. Any dropped chunk gets resent automatically — if the flash succeeds you know the image on flash matches the file byte-for-byte.

Wireless USB¶

Pendant traffic runs over the Wireless USB →, the same accessory the AutoDustBoot and Smart RGB LED use. Pairing, unpairing, and firmware flashing for the Wireless USB are on that page — the pendant never needs to be re-flashed when the Wireless USB is updated.