So know we know that it’s not closed loop. It uses the optics for the homing. I believe they said that they use the glowforge logo on the gantry as the ‘target’.
The next question would be- Is that handled locally or via the cloud? That’s an interesting amount of overhead for as simple process of referencing the machine. I get they are trying to reduce the cost of the hardware- but that’s a bit hardcore. But, If it is cloud based, that going to be an interesting curveball for anyone wanting to attempt to take the FW and modify it to operate cloudless. (Here) & (Here) Short of just adding endstops and using a traditional BoB or MCU as the motion contoller of course.