Introduction to Communication Boxes

The Software Bisque BBox is a battery-operated decoder designed to monitor the positions of two incremental encoders, and provide this information to a host computer via its RS232C communications port. Encoders of 2048- to 8192-tic resolution—post quadrature—are typically used.

Since Software Bisque introduced the BBox in 1989, several other manufacturers have offered BBox-compatible devices. While these decoders come in a variety of shapes and features, their means of interfacing with TheSky is similar. To simplify, we generally refer to them all generically as "BBox."  So that you may determine if yours is one of these, here is a listing of BBox-compatible commercial CPS decoders: