I searched information on this forum without success for my project.
Perhaps that somebody who have some knowledge in electroni can help me. Thanks in advance.
My problem is simple.
I have a Shit Register 74HC595 to manage a LCD screen (I use the LCD3Wires library)
I have a Shift Register 74HC595 to manage some LEDs
I have a Shift Register 74HC165 to manage some buttons
For each Shift Register, I use 3 wires (Clock, Latch and Data), so a total of 9 wires
I think that it's possible to optimize that and use less wires but I don"t want to use the I2C port.
I thought that I can use the same wire for the 3 Shift registers. If it's possible, it will be a good deal for me because with 7 wires, I could manage my LCD, 8 Leds and 8 Buttons.
In fact for the 74HC165, the pinMode for the DATA pin is INPUT, and for the two other 74HC595, the pinMode for the DATA pin is OUTPUT.
In my software, I initialized the pinMode in the constructors of the classes and I never changed them after...
I tried to common the Data pin for the two 74HC595, and that's work fine.
If I want to common the Data pin withe the 74HC165, I need to change the pinMode for the DATA pin, each time...
So, I will use for my 3 Shift Registers 6 wires: it's not so bad
I don't know anything about this, but here's my thinking...
When you use tlc5940's, you can use the same pins and just have to add one more for a signal... You should be able to do what Grumpy_Mike mentioned; use the same data and clock pin, and use 3 latch connections... A total of 5 pins...