Decoding stream containing hex-values received on Serial port.

Zapro:
Does it make any more sense now?

Yes and no.

That code snippet seems to send the same byte 16 times - why would you do that?

And the latch and strobe stuff seems to be unconnected to the shiftOut() - is that intentional? If so why?

In any case, it seems to me that the code I suggested is still generally relevant except that your sendBytes() function would substitute for Serial.write(). And I suspect your sendBytes() function should be sendByte() - singular

...R