Introduction: LinkIt One - Shift Register

By

The LinkIt One is a very good board to work with and a great Arduino alternative but as the projects get complicated you may face that 14 pins of the LinkIt One may be just not enough. And sometimes it may not have an extra board to work with to get all the sensors or maybe you want it all on one board.

Luckily, there are alternatives, one of the alternatives is using a Shift Register, the most commonly used shift resistor with the Arduino is the 74HC595 IC and in todays project I will show you how to control multiple LEDs via a Shift Registerand use just 3 LinkIt One Pins.

So lets get started....

Step 1: Requirements

Lets start with gathering is all the parts.

  • LinkIt One
  • LEDs
  • Resistor
  • Battery
  • Breadboard
  • Some Jumper wires

Once you have all the parts its is time to get started...

Step 2: 74HC595

The 74HC595 IC is the most commonly used shift Register with the Arduino, so this makes it ideal for using it with the LinkIt One as the LinkIt One has the same number of pins as the Arduino does. The 74HC595 is a 8 bit Shift Register this means that you can control 8 Pins by using just 3 Arduino pins. You can also add in more shift Registers to the circuit and control even more LEDs.

This project is a great reference if you are making a LED matrix where the number of LEDs is quite high.

Step 3: Circuit

The Circuit is really very simple make sure you try out my previous tutorials to get you started with this project and get you familiar with the LinkIt One. Follow the circuit above above construct the circuit on a breadboard. The circuit works as a counter circuit generating a pattern as the one shown in the video. A shift Register can also be used with a 16x2 LCD which is one of the most common use of the circuit.

Step 4: Code

The code can be found below, you need an Arduino IDE with the LinkIt plugin to get the code uploaded to the board. The Code is quite simple to understand and all it does is makes the digital pins to work as a counter and thereby creating an LED pattern the pattern can be changed according to your will.

Attachments