Role of controller with Lightburn?

Please forgive me if the answer to this question is completely obvious.
I’m considering building a 50W’ish CO2 laser. A question I have is about the controller and its role when using Lightburn.
For context I built a CNC router (PrintNC) using a control board from UCCNC operated by their excellent software running on a laptop. So adhoc control of the CNC router (jogging etc.) is done from via the software on the laptop. Feeds and speeds (similiar to power and speed on a laser) are typically set in the cut file but speed can be adjusted on the fly via the software.

I see that CO2 lasers (from K40 on up) have controls on the machine.
My question is if I can e to jog, home etc. the laser from Lightburn, what is the role of a controller interface like a Ruida has when paired up with Lightburn?

This is the Key distinction between GCode controllers and Ruida (DSP) controllers.

With a GCode controller the GCode generated dictates the path, speeds and laser output most of the time. There is a cornering algorithm but that’s the extent of that control.

The DSP controller handles data faster and provides more nuanced control over the motion planning.

Oz does a better job of explaining it than I can:

I’ll add to what John has already covered.

I’m deliberately excluding discussion of the internal technical aspects of the controllers but from a user perspective, in very broad terms, DSP controllers are all offline controllers. They can run jobs without LightBurn on. Most g-code controllers are online controllers. They require LightBurn to be connected and streaming data to the controllers to run a job. Having said that, offline g-code controllers do exist.

That’s super helpful, really appreciate that information and the link.

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