RFID Card

1. HID cards are products manufactured by the U.S. company HID Corporation. 

HID originally began as a division of Hughes Aircraft Company, providing card readers and cards for internal use throughout the corporation. The acronym "HID" originally stood for "Hughes Identification." In 1991, the division spun off from Hughes Aircraft; in the years that followed, HID entered a period of continuous and rapid growth.

2. The Difference Between ID Cards and HID Cards

The term "ID card" generally refers to a read-only, low-frequency card containing an EM chip or similar circuitry (though read-write versions also exist). Operating at a frequency of 125 kHz (with some variants at 134.2 kHz), these cards are widely used across various applications. Low-frequency ID card readers are currently the most prevalent type of reader on the market; they support a variety of transmission formats and are, for the most part, universally compatible. 

In contrast, HID low-frequency cards are a specific brand of cards produced by HID Corporation. While they technically fall under the category of low-frequency cards, they bear little direct relation to generic "ID cards." The key distinction is that the chips embedded in HID cards are pre-configured at the factory with region-specific serial numbers and are encrypted. Consequently, they utilize proprietary formats and are not universally compatible with card readers from other manufacturers; in other words, HID cards can only be used with HID card readers.

3. Selected Types of HID Low-Frequency Cards

PROXCARD II: Commonly referred to as the "1326 thick card." 

ISOCARD II: Commonly referred to as the "1386 thin card." 

DUOCARD II: Commonly referred to as the "1336 thin card with magnetic stripe." 

MICROPROX Tag: Commonly referred to as the "1391 tag card." 

PROXKEY II: Commonly referred to as the "1346 key fob." 

PROXCARD PLUS: Commonly referred to as the "16X card."

4. HID Card Formats

HID card formats include the 26-bit format, the HID 37-bit format, the Corporate 1000 long format, and various OEM formats.