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Smart RGB LED

The ncSender Smart RGB LED is a wireless RGB / RGBW light strip that mirrors your machine state — green while a job is running, red on an alarm, teal while probing, a small light show when a job finishes. Everything runs automatically once the strip is paired; there's no G-code to add.

Hardware

  • Wireless controller board driving a WS2811 RGB LED strip. That's the only strip type supported right now.
  • Requires a 24 V power supply. The board and strip are engineered around a 24 V rail — 5 V / 12 V feeds don't drive the strip cleanly. Size the supply to your strip length (LED strips pull real current).
  • Pairs with the Wireless USB → — the same Wireless USB the pendant and AutoDustBoot use.

Wireless USB is required

Unlike the pendant (which can run over its own direct USB cable) and the AutoDustBoot (which can run over a TTL aux pin without any ncSender at all), the Smart RGB LED only talks to ncSender through the Wireless USB →. If you don't have a Wireless USB paired, the plugin can't reach the controller and the strip won't reflect machine state.

The plugin

Install the RGB LED plugin from ncSender's plugin catalog, then open it from the Plugins panel. The plugin has three tabs.

Status

Pair the strip, tune brightness / LED count / idle behaviour, and see what the strip is showing right now.

RGB LED Status tab

  • Pair New Device — pair the LED controller to your Wireless USB (Wireless USB → has the full step-by-step).
  • Machine state / Strip shows / Firmware — three read-only cards showing what the machine is doing, what the strip is rendering, and the firmware version on the controller. Handy for confirming the plugin and strip are in sync.
  • LED count — how many pixels are on your strip. Set once to match the strip you wired up; the controller persists the value.
  • Brightness — master 1 – 255 slider. Persists on the controller so it survives reboots and re-pairs.
  • Idle dim (min) — after this many minutes without a machine-state change the strip dims to a soft baseline; any state change wakes it back up. Set to 0 to disable.
  • Identify — flashes the strip six times so you can pick out which controller you're looking at when you have more than one.

Colors

Fully customize what the strip does for every machine state, plus two optional overlays.

RGB LED Colors tab

Overlays & Shows

  • X-axis follower — overlays a small cluster onto the strip that tracks the spindle's X position in real time. Useful as a "where's the tool" indicator when the strip is where you can see it but the spindle isn't.
  • Job Completion — the animation the strip plays when a job finishes. Pick from Fireworks (default), or one of the other built-in shows in the dropdown. Each show runs a few seconds and then the strip returns to the hold colour.

State Colors

A per-state colour picker for every machine state: Idle, Running, Jogging, Hold, Alarm, Door, Probing, Homing, Tool Change. Click the colour chip to open a picker; Reset returns that single state to its factory colour. Restore defaults at the top of the card resets everything at once.

Overrides live on the controller, so they survive reboots and follow the strip if you move it to a different machine.

Firmware

Check for and flash new controller firmware over the wireless link.

RGB LED Firmware tab

Waits for the strip to report its version, then offers an update when a newer release is available. Uses the same chunked, verified transport the pendant's wireless OTA uses, so dropped ESP-NOW frames retry automatically.

How the colours work

ncSender sends the state name to the controller (idle, running, alarm, probing, homing, tool-changing, complete, …). The controller looks up the colour + animation for that name and drives the strip accordingly. That means:

  • Colours you pick under State Colors override the built-in defaults but stay on the controller — no per-project or per-machine configuration to remember.
  • New machine states added in future ncSender / firmware releases just work — the plugin only forwards the name.

Troubleshooting

  • Strip stays dark. Check the strip's own power (USB-C or 12 V). The controller can be paired and healthy while the strip has no power. Also verify LED count on the Status tab matches your actual strip length.
  • Wrong colours (green looks turquoise, red looks pink). The Smart RGB LED is built for WS2811 strips only — plugging in a different chipset (SK6812 RGBW, WS2812) shifts the byte order and the colours read as wrong. Confirm your strip's chipset.
  • State colour override doesn't stick after re-pair. State-colour overrides are stored on the controller — if the controller lost power without saving, tap the colour picker again and it'll persist.
  • Strip freezes on one colour. Power-cycle the controller. If it keeps happening, check the Wireless USB shows the LED as Connected — a dropped link freezes the strip on whatever it last received.