The group of ${\mathcal{C}}^{1}$ -diffeomorphisms of any sparse Cantor subset of a manifold is countable and discrete (possibly trivial). Thompson’s groups come out of this construction when we consider central ternary Cantor subsets of an interval. Brin’s higher-dimensional generalizations $nV$ of Thompson’s group $V$ arise when we consider products of central ternary Cantor sets. We derive that the ${\mathcal{C}}^{2}$ -smooth mapping class group of a sparse Cantor sphere pair is a discrete countable group and produce this way versions of the braided Thompson groups.