shifter register

You need decoupling on the 595, could easily be the problem.

what do you mean by that?

You are switching lots of current to the LEDs at fantastic speeds, if there's no decoupling capacitor close to the shift register the transients could reset the chip as it latches and make it look like its broken. Every logic chip should have decoupling close-by (within a cm or so), 0.1uF as a minimum, for higher current loads 1uF or more could be wise.

You don't show decoupling in your diagram so I assumed you'd omitted it...

[ assume 8 times 20mA, thats upto 0.16A switching in 3ns or so, over 50 million amps/second -
it doesn't take much stray inductance to induce several volts at those rates ]

so a capicotor between the latch pin and ground?

Power and Gnd (VCC and Gnd).

my 595's must be duds

One can go bad - I have yet to see a bad ic in my life, however. However, it is unlikely all of them have gone back.

Maybe the issue is your wiring?

If you have a logic analyzer / scope you can put it on the sck/mosi pins to see if the right sequency is actually piped to the chip.

hmm i dont know i was just following a tutorial and its wiring diagram just to get a start on how the shift registers work and when i set it up it didnt work. So basically i am lost.

my goal was to grasp the understanding of the shift register then move on to an 8x8 matrix with shift register.

See my page here:

Also one about the 8x8 matrix:

The decoupling capacitors (between Vcc and Gnd) will probably help. I found my shift registers behaved a bit strangely without them.

juniorhowell:
hmm i dont know i was just following a tutorial and its wiring diagram just to get a start on how the shift registers work and when i set it up it didnt work. So basically i am lost.

Go and complain to the author of the tutorial! Decoupling capacitors are essential...

ok guess i will have to get me some capacitors

While adding decoupling is a good thing to do, I think that the problem is with your code.

The delay of 75 mills will with your data turn on each of your leds for 75 mills and then turn it off. This is so fast that all you would see (even if the hardware is ok) is a very faint glow on the led.

Try changing delay(75) to delay(2000). Than play around.

Mark

added the capacitor with no change. shift registers ares cheap enough i decided to order a new batch and try again. waiting for the new ones to come in

added the capacitor with no change.

Not surprising, :).

All I can tell you is that your code works. The problem is hardware.

dhenry:

added the capacitor with no change.

All I can tell you is that your code works. The problem is hardware.

He is wrong there is something wrong with both your hardware and your software.
Keep the capacitors, you still need them, the fact that it made no change means you have something else wrong as well. Up that delay and re check the wiring, especially power and ground.

new shift registers come in today. Will make sure to check all wiring as well as change the delay and see if it works.
really appreciate all the help so far.

I just tried your exact sketch (on the first page of this thread) with my 595 shift registers as pictured here, and it worked!

The wires to the Arduino are different because that is the same photo I took when I used SPI to transfer.

However, it proves the code is OK.

Thus it must be hardware.

ok with the new shift register i can get it to work when i disconnect the latch pin from my arduino and it will run and then stop and then start again

running with pin 11 on the 595 to pin 3 on arduino pin 12 to + voltage and pin 14 to pin 2