GRBL-Controller-Sender

A native, cross-controller CNC/laser sender for Linux, written in Object Pascal (Free Pascal / Lazarus, built with CodeTyphon Studio). Talks to GRBL 0.9.x, GRBL 1.1 / grblHAL, Smoothieware and g2core over serial, with g-code streaming, 3D toolpath preview, probing, a universal $$ settings grid, a firmware builder (grblHAL/µCNC dual-drive axis config + PlatformIO build/flash), FluidNC config.yaml editing, and an in-progress laser-engraving module.

See docs/USER-GUIDE.md for a short tab-by-tab guide to what actually works today.

⚠️ Status: test project, provided as-is, no warranty

This is a personal/hobby project published publicly so others can look at it, use it, or build on it — not a finished, vetted, production product. In particular:

• It drives real motors, spindles and (once the laser module lands) real lasers. A bug here can cause real physical damage or injury. Read the code, test on a machine you're prepared to lose, and don't trust it blindly around people or material you can't afford to damage.
• It is licensed under GPL-3.0-or-later (see LICENSE) and, per that license's own terms (sections 15-16), comes with absolutely no warranty, express or implied.
• Development happens phase-by-phase; not every advertised feature is finished, and some features are compiled in but not yet wired into the UI (see the project's own planning notes for current status — ask in an issue if you want to know where a specific feature stands).
• Linux only, for now. The only build/test environment available while developing this is Linux — there is no Windows machine to build or test a Windows target on, so no Windows binaries are provided and Windows compatibility is unverified. CodeTyphon/Lazarus/FPC can in principle target Windows too, but that path has not been exercised for this project at all.

If any of that is a problem for your use case, this probably isn't the right tool for you yet.

License

GPL-3.0-or-later. See LICENSE for the full text.

This project was built by studying (and in places fairly closely porting the architecture/protocol logic of) several other open-source CNC/laser sender projects — see THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md before you redistribute this, it lists exactly what was used from where, under what license, and discloses one real open licensing question (a GPL-2.0-only source ported alongside several GPL-3.0-or-later sources) that hasn't been given a formal legal opinion.

Building (Linux)

Prerequisites

• CodeTyphon Studio 9.00 (Qt5 "Big IDE" build), which bundles its own Free Pascal Compiler and Lazarus-derived IDE/LCL — install it first; this project depends on CodeTyphon's own package set (package names like adLCL, bs_SynEdit, lz_OpenGL are CodeTyphon-specific remappings of the stock Lazarus packages, not the stock names).
• Qt5 widgetset selected as the active CodeTyphon widgetset.
• The vendored packages/TLazSerial/ package (ships with this repo, built automatically as part of the project build).
• For the Firmware Builder tab: PlatformIO (pio on PATH) and, for AVR targets, avrdude.
• For the (in-progress) laser module's raster/SVG import: the pl_BGRAbitmap CodeTyphon package (ships with CodeTyphon Studio).

Build

From the project root:

typhonbuild64 -B --ws=qt5 GRBL-Controller-Sender.ctpr

(typhonbuild64 is CodeTyphon's own CLI build tool — note the 64 suffix; there is no plain typhonbuild binary on a typical CodeTyphon Linux install.) This produces the GRBL-Controller-Sender executable in the project root.

To open it in the IDE instead:

QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME=qt5ct typhon-ide64 GRBL-Controller-Sender.ctpr

Development machine this was built/tested on

Given for transparency, not as a hard requirement — other reasonably current Linux distributions with CodeTyphon 9.00 installed should work equally well, but this is the only combination actually exercised:

• Linux Mint 22.3 (Zena), Ubuntu/Debian-based
• Kernel 6.14, x86_64
• Qt5 widgetset (via qt5ct for consistent theming)
• CodeTyphon Studio 9.00 "Big IDE"

What's inside

• src/core/ — controller-agnostic logic: g-code parsing/preview, probing, board/machine catalogs, app config, i18n (hand-rolled EN/HR/DE, no gettext), the laser module's core units as they land.
• src/protocol/ — the serial streaming engine and per-controller protocol implementations (GRBL0/GRBL1/Smoothie/g2core).
• src/io/ — low-level serial port handling.
• src/ui/ — one TFrame (paired .pas+.frm) per tab/dialog.
• packages/TLazSerial/ — vendored serial-port LCL component.
• tools/ — optional bridge plugins for external design tools (Inkscape, GIMP 3.0, Krita, QCAD, FreeCAD, KiCad), each a small plain-file extension/plugin you install into that program yourself (not built by the main app). Each sends its export straight into this app's SVG or Raster Import tab over the same Unix-FIFO trigger the app's own multi-instance "SincroStart" feature uses — see each subfolder's own README for install steps.

Contributing / questions

This is currently developed solo, phase-by-phase, against a personal plan file that isn't part of the repository. Open an issue if something is unclear, broken, or you want to know whether a given feature is actually finished yet before you rely on it.