Until recently I have been using a wireless keyboard and standard Mach3 hotkeys and so on. It had the advantage that I could put it on the bed of the machine while eyeballing a setup position, and the built-in touchpad was useful as well, but I have just bought one of the £90 or so Chinese wireless MPG units. Plug-and-play for the basic functions, and with a little bit of work I have begun programming in my favourite macros (Z touch off, etc). I have found it more useful than I had expected, as it is so easy to switch between axes, jog speeds, and so on. Especially now I have programmed a button for "set X Y work coordinate zero". It's not so much a matter of being able to get to the spindle from the control position as being able to move around to squint at tool alignment or whatever and still have the control to hand. But it's horses for courses - this gadget suits my way of working. I'm fairly impressed by what it can do for the price. I had thought about building something, but for me it just wasn't worth it. Not as if I don't have enough projects on hand already...