SEMI E84 Equipment & Fab integration platform
SmartBoxE84 is a SEMI E84 integration platform for equipment and vehicles who need to communicate together. It’s highly flexible and modular architecture allows it to manage complex and custom E84 scenarios and to deal with additional signals from peripherals like sensors, lightcurtains, switches, towerlight…
A single SmartBoxE84 can handle up to 2 or 4 E84 ports or transceivers !
The SmartBoxE84 is a smart, versatile and affordable solution to integrate SEMI E84 standards in equipment and vehicles or any device expected to communicate through E84 local infra red protocol.
Get more information about SmartBoxE84
SmartBoxE84 has been first designed for equipment makers.
You can easily embed it directly inside the tool, thanks to its DIN rail connector, close to other electronic parts. Unlike other E84 controllers on the market, SmartBoxE84 is very modular : one box can handle up to 4 loadports! It communicates with the tool using its TCP/IP interface to free up space and multiple serial cables. It provides direct digital inputs for port status and separate digital inputs for emergency, light curtain or any others external signals. One digital output can be used to extend its capabilities and drive a peripheral like a towerlight. Our solution comes with an embedded emulation mode to simulate a vehicle and test your system.
Easy to integrate :
- DIN rails mount, 24v
- One system for up to 4 E84 sensors
- TCP/IP connectivity with TOOL controller
- Direct digital inputs for port status (optional)
- Separate digital inpurs for emergency and light curtain
- One digital output to control peripheral
Easy to deploy and to maintain :
- Powerful embedded uC to run custom scenarios
- Visual LED activity indicators
- Embedded configuration and administration graphical interface
- Embedded vehicle simulator
- USB and HDMI ports to connect debug screen, keyboard and mouse
- Open technologies (Linux, JAVA…)
What is E84 standard ?
SEMI E84 Specification for Enhanced Carrier Handoff Parallel I/O Interface
Modern Fabs use extensive automated material handling systems (AMHS) to transfer wafer carriers : AGV, RGV, OHT… The E84 standard specifies the communications between the equipment (passive) and the AMHS (active).
The communication between Equipment and Vehicle is based on an optical infrared communication layer.
When the vehicle approaches the equipment, it aligns its E84 sensor with equipment’s sensor and starts the dialog with the equipment.
SmartBoxE84 is compliant with Hokuyo and GetControl DB25 sensors.
E84 standards defines all the communication scenarios between vehicle and equipment with a focus on error handling and security for peoples and materials.
Here are the main content exchanged between equipment and vehicle :
- Port/Material Status : available or not to Drop/Pickup a FOUP
- Cycle type : Dropoff or Pickup
- Cycle Status : Handoff ongoing or not
- Emergency stop
All this information (and much more such as detailed status of each E84 led) is available through the SmartBoxE84 API.
SmartBoxE84 is able to deal with custom E84 scenarios.
Hassle-free E84 integration solution
SmartBoxE84 manages on its own all the E84 protocol layers and scenarios, and interfaces with the E84 sensors.
It gets relevant information from multiple sources: equipment PLC (TCP/IP protocol or webservice), directly from loadports (IO) or any other external source.
Easy to setup and monitor with remote webadmin user interface
SmartBoxE84 handles up to 4 E84 Ports !
Complex and extended integration
Thanks to its open architecture and rich interface, SmartBoxE84 is able to integrate additional devices like Emergency Stop button, users interface, light curtain towerlight, robots, camera, interlock…
Fast integration tools
Remote WebAdmin
The remote SmartBoxE84 webadmin allows you taking control and monitoring the system : port configuration, start/stop, running state, log access, realtime status…
Debug Tools
Remote realtime leds visualization will help you understanding the system behavior in live while powerful timestamped and detailed logs will keep a trace of any activity of the system.
E84 Vehicle Simulator
With our graphical vehicle simulator you can use one E84 port to simulate a vehicle and the other one to play the equipment : play sequences, stress tests, protocol erros simulations…
