Since the introduction of the digital communicator in 1978, our industry has spent thousands of costly man-hours programming (and often reprogramming) communicators, sensors and other devices. In the old days we had to program PROM chips using a vendor-specific “burner.” Today we still have to program many devices using either a keypad or a PC. Technicians performing these tasks need extensive knowledge of the device and the programming options to ensure the device or system functions properly and to avoid expensive callbacks.