Hermes protocol

Hermes is a machine-to-machine communication standard used in the SMT assembly industry.

[1] It is a successor to the SMEMA standard, introducing improvements such as: simpler physical wiring (Ethernet), use of popular data transmission formats (TCP/IP and XML), reduced number of barcode scanners (required only once at the beginning of the line), transmission of board data (such as barcodes & dimensions) to downstream machines.

Accordingly, The Hermes Standard was assigned an IPC naming code: It can now officially be referred to as IPC-HERMES-9852.

[3] The actual version, IPC-HERMES-9852, version 1.5[4] version 1.2[5] provides an electrical SMEMA interface replacement and extends the interface to communicate such things as unique identifiers for handled printed boards, equipment identifiers of the first machine noticing a printed board, barcodes, conveyor speed and specific information about the product type.

[6] On November 14, 2017, Hermes received a Global SMT&Packaging Award in the category “Software Process Control” at Productronica in Munich, Germany.