Threebyte

Threebyte is a software project and data encoding format designed to efficiently represent 24-bit data units (three-byte chunks) in streams and storage. The format emphasizes low overhead, deterministic packing, and cross-language portability, making it suitable for embedded devices, telemetry, and network protocols where payload size matters and computational resources are limited.

Core to Threebyte is a simple, unit-based encoding that treats data as a sequence of three-byte blocks. It provides a reference encoder and decoder with bindings for C, Python, and JavaScript. The base representation favors straightforward bit packing and predictable performance over cryptographic security, with optional support for basic error detection such as a CRC.

Threebyte was released in an open-source context in the late 2010s by a collaborative community and has since maintained a small ecosystem of libraries and examples. Its design goals include ease of implementation, minimal runtime overhead, and compatibility with common endianness conventions. The project encourages embedding it in resource-constrained environments where fixed block sizes align with sensor outputs or protocol formats.

Reception to Threebyte has been mixed. Supporters praise its simplicity, speed, and suitability for constrained hardware. Critics note that three-byte alignment is inherently niche and can lead to inefficient packing when data does not naturally occur in 3-byte units, limiting broader applicability.

See also: data encoding, bit packing, 3-byte data, embedded systems; Threebyte project homepage.