terraDial

terraDial is the control panel your terraPen bench has been missing. A 240×240 round touchscreen with a knurled rotary knob, it talks straight to your plotter's controller over Wi-Fi — no laptop, no phone app, no cable run across the studio.

Turn the knob to jog X, Y, and Z with selectable step sizes and set a zero per axis. Pick a job straight off the plotter's SD card and watch live progress on the dial, with elapsed time and an estimated time remaining alongside the percentage. Lift the pen, drop it, home the machine with a clear-the-bed confirmation gate first, or hit E-Stop — findable at a glance because it's the one control that's always red. If an alarm trips, the dial shows the machine's own error message, not just generic advice. If your rail is running terraPixel lighting, control brightness, film mode, and comet width from the same dial.

Setup happens on the device itself: scan for your network, enter the password with the radial keyboard, and you're on. A five-LED status ring around the bezel reports machine state visibly across the room, and the display sleeps itself during long plots so it isn't glowing at you for hours.

Power comes from a single USB-A cable: plug it into the plotter, a USB port or a phone charger. Firmware updates arrive over Wi-Fi, so that cable is all it ever needs. Runs happily off a USB battery pack too, for a plotter that isn't parked next to an outlet.

Features

• Knob-first control: jog axes, run jobs, adjust settings, all from one rotary dial with touch as a second input
• Live job progress with elapsed time and an estimated time remaining, plus an SD card job browser — no laptop required at the plotter
• Pen up/down, homing with a clear-the-bed confirmation, E-Stop, and alarm clear — the alarm screen shows the machine's actual error, not a generic message
• Rail lighting control via terraPixel: brightness, film mode, comet width
• On-device Wi-Fi setup with network scan and radial keyboard password entry
• Five-LED status ring, readable across the room
• Sleep mode to protect the display during long plots
• USB-A powered; runs from a USB battery pack for cable-free setups

Specs

• Processor: ESP32-S3R8, 16MB flash, 8MB PSRAM
• Display: 240×240 round IPS touchscreen, SPI
• Touch: CST816D capacitive controller, I²C
• Input: EC11-style rotary encoder with push switch
• Status LEDs: 5× WS2812 addressable RGB ring
• Power: USB-A cable (plotter, USB port, charger or battery pack)
• Firmware updates: over Wi-Fi, from the dial's own settings menu
• Connectivity: Wi-Fi, talks to FluidNC over WebSocket
• Compatible with: any plotter, laser, or CNC mill running FluidNC firmware over Wi-Fi — including terraPen, most FluidNC-based DIY builds, and machines like the UUNA TEK 3.0 series, which ship with FluidNC firmware and Wi-Fi as standard. Not firmware-specific to terraPen. Optional terraPixel rail lighting on machines that support it.