Arduino Tutorial 42: Understanding How to Use a Serial to Parallel Shift Register (74HC595)

74HC595
In this Circuit the 74HC595 is independently controlling 8 different LEDs.

In this lesson we show you how to expand the number of LEDs or other devices you can control with the Arduino by incorporating a Serial to Parallel converter. The chip we will be using is the 74HCH595. When connected to just a few pins of the Arduino, data can be sent serially to the chip, and then LEDs can be connected to the output pins of that chip. Hence, you can control 8 LEDs using only 3 digital pins on the Arduino.

This is somewhat of a tedious project, because the circuit has lots of wires, and it must be connected perfectly. We use the following schematic in this project:

74HC595
This is the schematic we use in this example to control 8 LEDs from the 74HC595 chip.

The video takes you step by step through the entire build and programming.

The code we used in this build is included below: