A brief history of BiDiB

Bidirectional data transfer was announced by the industry since 2004 and was successively implemented in decoders. First bidirectional feedback systems becomes available in 2009, but this systems had not been designed for a system-wide installation.

With the release of 16 channel feedback sensors on the market in 2010 (Blucher, OpenDCC) there was a strongly need for a common system bus. In long discussions a powerful and future-proof system bus was designed. This system bus is the succession from Tams RC-Talk after the system becomes available.

This draft contains concepts and structures that solves all other known system bus problems from other model railway vendors. Basically, the bus was designed as a feedback bus only but it has the potential to become the All-in-One system bus for model railways. Therefore, the design is constantly expanding to cover command stations, booster, accessories and control panels.

Once the system bus was running fine in the simulation and we were confident of the concept, we decided to build a test setup of interface and several different types of nodes in order to test it in the field.

At this point I would like to say "Thank you" for the constructive dialogue to 3 persons Mr. Tams, Mr. Blücher and Mr. Herzog that took an active part in this project. Also I would like to thank Mr. Fischer for the translation to English.

History of BiDiB

TodayOngoing active discussion about further improvement and scope enhancements of the protocol
May 2020New capabilities for the serial interface
May 2020Publication of many accumulated individual innovations
December 2017Release of netBiDiB: transport via network
2016Many smaller and larger improvements for feedback and accessories, BiDiB Version 0.7.
March 2015Extension and optimisation of accessory node control, BiDiB Version V0.6.
2014Further completion of Railcom and POM support
December 2013Successful show operation of a large layout with over 20 boosters and 600 detector sections.
August 2012Accessory nodes are developed, and with them multiple host applications like Wizard and Monitor
June 2012First series of track occupancy detectors and boosters
February 2012Test configuration of a BiDiBus system with multiple nodes and automatic login is working.
July 2011First successful connection between PC and BiDiB-System
December 2010First release at www.bidib.org; Definition of BiDiB (feedback module) and BiDiBus; List of supporters

See also the specification revision history.