Abstract: Fire alarm and intrusion alarm conductors are wired from a plurality of dwellings to a nearby data transmitter circuit which is linked by a single pair of conductors to a remote data receiver circuit. The alarm conductors are sequentially scanned in the data transmitter circuit by a binary counter which sequentially enables or opens gates that are coupled to the alarm conductors. When an alarm condition is detected on one of the alarm conductors, the scanning counter is stopped and the counter number is converted from parallel form to serial form. The serial number is transmitted from the data transmitter circuit to the data receiver circuit. The least significant bit of the number signifies whether the alarm is a fire or an intrusion. The remaining bits signify the location. In the receiver circuit, the received data is converted back to parallel form and is printed out on a printer. The transmitted data includes a first bit which is always a binary 1 and a last bit which is always a binary zero.