Hex encoding is very inefficient to handle because it's a non-contiguous part of the ASCII table. I usually use "cavcode"(*), because that's easy to implement in most programming languages, including in C for stuff like Arduinos. And of course it works very well with framing bytes.

sub frame2packet {
    my @frame = @_;

    my $packet = '';
    foreach my $byte (@frame) {
        my $lowbyte = ($byte & 0x0f) + 65;
        my $highbyte = ($byte >> 4) + 65;

        $packet .= chr($highbyte);
        $packet .= chr($lowbyte);
    }

    return $packet;
}

sub packet2frame {
    my $packet = shift;

    my @chars = split//, $packet;
    my @frame = ();

    # Decode to bytes
    while(@chars) {
        my $high = shift @chars;
        my $low = shift @chars;

        my $val = ((ord($high) - 65) << 4) + (ord($low) - 65);
        push @frame, $val;
    }

    return @frame;
}
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Writing, for example, the counterpart encoder for Arduino is also quite easy. No need for a lookup table and stuff, this can be done with very low RAM usage:

      
highbyte = 0x02;
Serial.write(highbyte);
for(inoffs = 0; inoffs < PKT_LEN; inoffs++) {
    intmpbyte = inpacket[inoffs];
    highbyte = ((intmpbyte >> 4) & 0x0f) + 65;
    lowbyte = (intmpbyte & 0x0f) + 65;
    Serial.write(highbyte);
    Serial.write(lowbyte);
}
highbyte = 0x03;
Serial.write(highbyte);
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(*) cavcode stands for "cavac encode". Yes, named it after myself, and nobody can stop me.