What Does Wiegand Interface Mean?

The Wiegand interface is a wiring standard used for interconnecting peripherals like fingerprint readers, card swipers or iris recognition devices. Initially created by HID Corporation, the Wiegand devices gained popularity thanks to the popularity of the Wiegand effect card readers of the 1980s. The Wiegand interface is considered a de facto wiring standard for card swipe mechanisms, especially for electronic data entry.

Techopedia Explains Wiegand Interface

The Wiegand interface consists of three wires in the physical layer, the first wire is for ground and other two for data transmission, known as Data low/DATA0 and Data high/DATA1. The wires are composed of an alloy with magnetic properties. DATA0 and DATA1 are pulled up to high voltage, when no data is sent. When “0” is transmitted, the DATA0 wire is pulled to a low voltage while the DATA1 stays at high voltage. When “1” is transmitted, DATA0 stays at high voltage, whereas the DATA1 is pulled to a low voltage.