gSender 1.5.5 - Release Thread

[gwilki]

@Twisthem488 Search on here for reverting to a previous version of gSender. There are several threads that explain what you need to do before installing an older version.

[Twisthem488]

Hey Trig, I think I’ve found something out. Mine seemed to stop working randomly, but it turns out if I didn’t click fast enough it would thing I’m holding the button and try to do a continuous move. Whenever this happened it would stop responding to future commands. I was able to replicate this by purposefully clicking and holding the button. Whenever I did, it would send the G20G91 move command with the value of 10000 and then always fail to followup or respond afterwards until reconnecting to the cnc.

I found a workaround and wonder if you could try to see if it’s true for you as well. Go to your Gsender settings and change it from inches to mm. Then try to do a continuous move while pressing and holding a jog button. You should notice that the jog command changes from G20G91 to G21G91 (since you’re now in metric), and at least for me will do a proper continuous move and continue to work afterwards. I don’t know if this is related to some unit conversion that is happening behind the scenes or what, but for the time being I’ll just work in mm.

[Tig]

Hey Twistthem88 (great handle) I just read your note and will try it out shortly and will let you know the result. Thanks!

[Tig]

You absolutely nailed it my friend. There is obviously a bug in the conversion code that crashes the system when it has to convert too quickly. The code then becomes a mix of a G20 command and metric units! This should be something that the gSender people can track down quite quickly, there must be quite a few people who want to work in inches who are affected by this bug.

[Tig]

Hey Grant if you have a look at the thread below you will see that there appears to be a bug in the metric to inches conversion code that is crashing the program for several of us. Can you let the folks at gSender know?
Cheers, Tig

[gwilki]

@Tig Don: Sienci tech monitors the gSender topics so I’m sure that they already know of this bug. That said, I suspect that Sienci is closed today and they will definitely be closed tomorrow for Canada Day.

[DaveS]

@chrismakesstuff

know

I think my problem is the 720p monitor and older computer sending 1080 that gets downgraded by monitor.
I played with all my settings with regards to sizing and resolutions.
I plan on upgrading cpu shortly to either your display/cpu or just a newer mini cpu.

[ADB8056]

I’m using a Longmill MK1, SLB and gcontrol panel. The jogging problem has been fixed when using both VCarve and Lightburn. I’m really enjoying many of the new features!

[chrismakesstuff]

Roger that @Tig and @Twisthem488, we’ll see if we can find a solution to this and get it out on the next release - keep an eye out. It’s the weren’t 1000 inch jog movements that are causing your machines to freeze up

@Johan.Mota the reason for this is that we now have combined firmware settings and app setting together in this new version and since firmware settings can never change from using mm (it’s built into the core of grbl and grblHAL) then we chose to also have gSender’s settings follow suit with mm as well. Otherwise, it would look quite disjointed with different units intermingled. Don’t worry, you can still convert your dimensions from inches to mm, enter them into the settings, and you should be good to go.

@saskia it’s really sad to hear about that. It’s been unfortunate that the libraries we’ve been working with continue to drop support for older devices, since that puts us in a spot where there’s no other way to keep making new gSender iterations without losing support for older devices. You can still of course download all older gSender versions that are compatible so at least there’s that - sorry I can’t offer any other solution

@tme can you provide some more information about your issue with click-and-hold jogging? We’re not seeing that happen in our setups

[chrismakesstuff]

@tme I can see your issue is the same as what I noted for @Tig and @Twisthem488 above with the 10000 inch jog movements which is causing your jogging to not work. We’ll have a fix for that out in 1.5.2 which should be released tomorrow, then you can let us know if you’re right as rain again!

[KGN]

Notes

• Fix issues with remote mode disconnecting main client and jobs stopping when connecting from remote mode
• Significantly sped up file loading and rendering on larger files
• Job end notifications will no longer appear if toggled off
• SVG visualization no longer teeny-tiny on inches post processor files
• Plus and Minus buttons returned to jog speeds with the prior existing logic
• AutoZero touchplate renamed to just AutoZero
• Added new Config option for Jog Delay, which configures how long a keypress/UI press/gamepad press needs to be made before swapping to continuous jogging
• Commands sent later in connection cycle to reduce situations where Error 1 occurs when unlocking and resetting the board
• Generating a surfacing file no longer causes issues on main visualizer if not sent there
• Motors sections again will disappear from config when empty
• Restore defaults and default highlight works correctly in Config on settings considered hybrid between grbl/grblHAL
• Prevented situations where alarm list was not populating correctly
• Continuous jog without soft limits now sends more sane values when jogging in Inches across both controllers (used to be 10000)
• Stopping a file that has an early M0 already sent will no longer pop up the pause modal
• Config look and feel tweaks
• Shortcuts rearranged so more commonly set ones are higher up
• File stat feed rates now convert correctly
• Zero All on grblHAL no longer sends Zero on A if A-axis not reported
• Various look and feel changes

Download

As always, gSender can be downloaded on Github:

Release v1.5.2 · Sienci-Labs/gsender

[LivingstonWoodcraft]

I upgraded from 1.4. Which had no problems other than the screen locking if it is running in the background. That was the main reason for installing the new version. It would just sit there, not letting me hit pause or stop, locked up if I had it in the background.
I am using a FoxAlien XE-Pro running Grbl 1.1h. I have the config set for Grbl vs GrblHAL.

After I zero the Z axis and I hit the XY button my machine dives into the workpiece at full force and I have to unplug it. I tried switching back to GrblHAL but it did the same thing.
It seems to only happen after Zeroing the Z axis. I’m lucky it didn’t break anything. I’m lucky it was positioned where it was and not over a hold down. It pushed a .25" shank, 4 flute, 30 deg v-bit almost all the way through .75 plywood.

Update: I went back to version 1.4.12 and it is doing the same thing.

[gwilki]

@LivingstonWoodcraft Welcome to the group.

When you “went back to 1.4.12”, did you follow the instructions on this forum concerning renaming files? If not, search on here for returning to a previous version of gSender.

[LivingstonWoodcraft]

I think I solved it. When I was setting up the options in the new version it was listing everything as MM. My safe height was set at .70" on the old version. In the new version it said .70 mm. So I changed it to 17 mm. But for some reason it was reading inches but displaying MM? So the Z axis was trying to move 17" down at full speed. Apparently something was off.
I’m a newb to this stuff.
Thank you for responding.

[Mattydboom]

Bit of an odd one, and not sure if its a bug or just new behaviour… My Xbox game controller would not pair with my existing controller profile within GSender. Not a problem I thought (there has been many updates to Gsender so perfectly understandable this may need to be setup a-fresh once in a while)…

Creating a new game pad profile works fine, in that it sees the controller and allows me to program the buttons etc… BUT… it seems now that the buttons are listed numerically only (0,1,2,3,4,5 etc), whereas the old profile correctly identifies the buttons by their appropriate names ( LT, RT, A, B, X, Y, LB, RB, etc…)

See attached screen shots comparing the new and old to see what I mean. Is this the new approach and so is expected, or is it a bug I wonder? Happy to post as a Github Issue if more appropriate.

Old Profile ( Button labels = LT, RT, A, B, X, Y, LB, RB, etc…)

New Profile ( Button labels = 0,1,2,3,4,5,6, etc…)

[Getnby]

I had the same issue in 1.5.1.

[iuliancalin]

i can confirm that spindle delay does not work in the latest versions 1.5.1 1.5.2 it worked before in 1.4x

[iuliancalin]

This is Good, really good

$J=G21 G91 X-20 Y-20 F5000
ok
$J=G21G91 X-3000 Y-3000 F5000
ok

this is set on rapid, what i had before was on rapid to jog one click at a time 20mm , but if i just held for continuous jog it would set X and Y to something crazy like -200000 and the controller would lock up but the software would keep going
so, i want to say, Thank you.

[walid_kayhan]

New gSender Update, v.1.5.3

---

Hey Folks,

Another week, another gSender update! We’ve been busy squashing bugs and polishing features based on your feedback. Here’s what’s new in v1.5.3:

New Features & Improvements

• Outline Mode Options: Choose between Detailed (original toolpath shape) or Square (bounding box) for outlines:

  • 

• Better grbl Detection: Improved reliability when identifying grbl-based boards (now catches FluidNC too!).

• Remote Mode Stability: Addressed startup blanking thanks to more robust configuration handling.

• Gamepad Profiles: When creating a new profile with standard button mapping, default labels will be used for the buttons:

  • Buttons
    button[0]	A
    button[1]	B
    button[2]	X
    button[3]	Y
    button[4]	LB
    button[5]	RB
    button[6]	LT
    button[7]	RT
    button[8]	Back
    button[9]	Start
    button[10]	L3
    button[11]	R3
    button[12]	Up
    button[13]	Down
    button[14]	Left
    button[15]	Right
    button[16]	Home

• Spindle Delay for Rotary Surfacing: Added an option to fine-tune spindle behaviour:

  • 

Fixes & Tweaks

• Visualizer:

  • Grid now matches your selected units:

    • 

  • Colours fixed for the Light theme.

  • No more disappearing acts—fixes empty visualizer.

• Units & Calculations:

  • Jog presets and safe height in Config now allow inch input.

  • Corrected unit conversions in squaring/calibration tools and made the default movement for the Z-axis downwards like it should’ve been.

  • File stats now display correctly for inches.

• Probing & Probing Tools:

  • Corner selection now persists.

  • Rotary tools (stock turning/probe) now disable properly in non-rotary mode.

• Firmware & Connectivity:

  • grblHAL devices handle AXS parsing more reliably.

  • Firmware settings apply immediately on import.

  • Ethernet connection stats now display correctly.

• Surfacing tools:

  • Fixes for edge cases in for flat surfacing tool for more reliable generation
  • Re-ordered sequence so that spindle turns on before moving to cutting point to make users feel more at ease

• Axis Management:

  • Fixed A-axis jogging UI from appearing on GRBL devices when not in rotary mode.

• UI/UX Polish:

  • Load File area looks better in Dark Mode.

  • Config options for limits no longer crash the app.

  • The Jogging axis wheel pop-up is back in the calibration tools.

  • Improved communication and layout of tools options and XY Squaring tool results

  • Reintroduced plus/minus buttons for jog feeds/distances with more intuitive behaviour:

    • 

Behaviour Restorations

• Spindle/Laser toggle now works like in v1.4.12.

• Bad file/line detection is back (and improved!) with errors showing in the Helper.

Under-the-Hood Changes

• Config sorting/filtering improvements.

• Improved handling of files or macros that use M0

• Text and layout tweaks throughout.

Where to Get It

Download the latest version here:
GitHub Release Page

As always, thanks for your reports and patience. If you happen to find any more bugs or these fixes didn’t work for you, let us know! Happy carving!

Walid - Lead Software Developer @ Sienci Labs