COBS encoder breaks a packet into one or more sequences of non-zero bytes. The encoding routine searches through the first 254 bytes of the packet looking for the first occurrence of a zero byte. If no zero is found, then a code of 0xFF is output, followed by the 254 non-zero bytes. If a zero is found, then the number of bytes examined, n, is output as the code byte, followed by the actual values of the (n-1) non-zero bytes up to (but not including) the zero byte. This process is repeated until all the bytes of the packet have been encoded.