What is the SecSpy?

The SecSpy is a self-contained, independent product that enables a user to collect, read, interpret and log SECS-II* protocol messages that are being transferred between semiconductor equipment and a host computer using the SECS-I (or HSMS version) communications standard*.

The SecSpy constitute a small passive piggyback hardware module defined as the ‘sniffer’ which is connected in-line to the SECS-I  RS-232 connection (either D9 or D25 connector) and a software package that can be run as a standard MS-Windows applications.

The SecSpy gives the engineers (process, equipment and maintenance) a direct access to the information from any desktop computer without the need for access or support of a central system to interpret the data.

The SecSpy Connection Layout

The SecSpy's uses

• Process follow-up

• Process analysis

• Maintenance event analysis

• External data collection (Tadin's TadiGuard etc.)

• The built-in tools such as filters, sorters, interpreters etc. enable user defined manipulations and extracts.

The SecSpy product highlights

The SecSpy is used both in Real-time and History.
The SecSpy output can be a display, a text file, a printout, a SML text file or a user-defined structured ASCII file.

The SecSpy output data structure includes the following fields:

• The absolute time of the message

• The Device ID

• The Stream and Function

• The Transaction’s Definition

• The Direction (H>E or E>H)

• The message breakdown in various formats (Binary, Hex, Alpha, ASCII).

• A user defined format, using plain English definitions. (Lot #, Wafer #, Recipe, Error names, etc.)

• An structured text file in format similar to SML (SECS Message Language).

Typical SecSpy output and analysis screens (click to enlarge)

The SecSpy Operation flow

• The SecSpy is optically connected to both the T (Equip. to Host) and the R line (Host to Equip.) and it passively reads the SECS transactions that are being transferred. It then passes the collected data to the user’s computer port (RS-232 , USB or TCP/IP). Next, the data pass a filter that only let pass transactions (Device, Streams and Functions) that were set to be detected.

• Next, the defined Streams and Functions are being split-up and interpreted in accordance with the SECS-II protocol, and transformed to hexadecimal, octal, binary and a readable text formats.

• The messages are saved to binary and text files, displayed or sent to an output file.

• The SecSpy data can further be integrated with or into any database is various formats.
   

SECS-II data displayed in Hex, ASCII and SML. (click to enlarge)

The SecSpy tools

      The SecSpy includes several tools that make its use easy and efficient.

¨       Filters: A set of filters enables to define only transactions and machines of interest to be detected and manipulated. The filters can be set to detect all transactions (including non-standard ones), all but a few, a few only, etc. The different filters can be used for filing, exporting and viewing.

¨       Sorting: The identified transactions can be sorted by any field: Time (default),  message type, direction, message number, device ID, etc..

¨       Raw data display: Can display the raw data in various formats (Binary, Hex, Alpha, ASCII) to enable manual user analysis.

¨       Export file: The user can define certain fields and give such fields Names. The data will then be automatically attached to the names and sent to an ASCII export SML file that can be read by external tools (such as MS-Excel, etc.)