// the find
jeyeager65/FluidTouch
FluidTouch is a touch-screen CNC controller interface for the Elecrow CrowPanel 7-inch ESP32 display, designed to control FluidNC-based CNC machines with an intuitive LVGL-based UI featuring joystick control, file management, macros, and real-time machine monitoring.
FluidTouch is a touchscreen pendant controller for CNC machines running FluidNC firmware, built on the Elecrow CrowPanel 7" ESP32-S3 display. It replaces a laptop or phone tethered to FluidNC's web UI with a dedicated physical controller you can mount on your machine. The target user is a hobbyist or small-shop CNC operator running a router or laser on FluidNC.
The web installer (ESP Web Tools) is a genuinely good UX decision — flashing ESP32 firmware via Chrome with no esptool install removes real friction for the target audience. Settings backup/restore to JSON is the right call for a device that might get wiped on firmware updates. Supporting up to 4 machine configs and 9 macros per machine covers the common case where someone has multiple tools sharing one pendant. The docs folder is solid: separate UI guide, usage instructions, configuration and development docs with screenshots.
Hard-locked to one hardware SKU (Elecrow CrowPanel 7", ESP32-S3 only) — if that board goes EOL or gets replaced with the P4 variant (already warned against in the README), the project is stranded. WiFi-only connectivity is a real limitation: WebSocket to FluidNC means a network outage or router restart mid-job is a problem, and there's no fallback. The joystick support is listed as 'analog joystick' but the hardware is a button-based jog tab first — it's not clear whether an actual analog stick is wired in or if this is software-only simulation. 46 stars with 22 forks after apparent active development suggests a small community, which matters when you hit the inevitable hardware quirk or need a feature the author hasn't prioritized.