ioSender V2

A new version of ioSender is near. It's still a work in progress but very usable. It was forked from the original ioSender by an old friend, Steven Wood. He has done a lot of work to make it friendly to beginners as well as experienced CNC users.

It has a lot of new features, but the one you will see right off the bat is Reconnecting, an often-requested feature. You don't need to exit V2 to reconnect. You can also switch between USB and Ethernet without exiting. Another welcome change is that the buttons are tactile—no more flat, zero-feedback action. The layout is different, with a task-oriented focus. There are hundreds of changes, too many to list here, so go get it and use it!

From the GitHub Readme, here are the highlights:

• All-in-one Job tab — DRO, jogging (on-screen + keyboard, up to 9 axes), program list, live 3D toolpath/carve view, and console in one resizable layout, with a fixed run-control bar (Home/Unlock/Reset/Run/Feed Hold/Stop) always visible at the bottom.

• Run, Dry Run, Check Run, or Simulate — a single Run button whose dropdown picks the mode: dry-run watches the toolpath with spindle/coolant forced off and Z clear of stock, Check Run validates via grblHAL's $C, and Simulate switches the connection to a bundled grblHAL simulator for the run and switches back automatically when it ends.

• Guided Start Job / Stepper Calibration / Auto Square / Surface Spoilboard wizards — each builds and runs its own program from on-screen inputs, no hand-written g-code required.

• Machine Setup wizard — walks a fresh or newly-flashed controller through homing, ATC macro provisioning, and first-run checks.

• Advanced settings editor — grbl/grblHAL $-settings presented with on-screen documentation, dynamically generated from data files and/or the controller's own reported settings.

• Offsets, Tools, Probing, Height Map, SD Card tabs, each covered in the online manual.

• Lathe mode, including conversational threading on a grblHAL controller with spindle-sync support.

• Bundled/matched simulator support — a grblHAL simulator built to match your connected controller's options, launched from Settings, -simulator, or the Run dropdown's Simulate mode, with no manual download/build step.

• ioSender XL — is the standard interface - main window with fully configurable, drag-to-place panels (a "main page editor") and pinnable flyouts, for a layout tuned to your machine and workflow.

• Localized into 7 languages (see Locale/) via x:Uid-driven LocBaml resources.

To install, first go to the GitHub page for ioSenderV2. Scroll down to the "Quick Install" section. You will use Windows PowerShell to install. Copy the PowerShell line and paste it into a PowerShell window. You can go from there.

Steve is working on it regularly, so the version number will change frequently. The GitHub repo has Discussions enabled; feel free to ask questions, suggest features/changes, or heap praise! Please report bugs in the Issues section. Also, there is a lot there, including an online user manual. Steve has put a lot of thought into usability, and it shows.

About Me.

I'm Phil Barrett, a long time CNC enthusiast. I run a small company, Brookwood Design, that makes several breakout boards for grblHAL and love to help people get the most out of their CNC machines.