Can you imagine having to hook up all of the lines necessary just to get 74HC595s to shift a bajillion bits for you? Yeah. Neither could we. So we made breadboard-friendly shift register modules that are capable of being hooked up ad infinitum to each other. Each board has 8 LED indicator lights and 8 switches that allow you (and your microcontroller or computer) to read or write any of the LEDs/switches through only six wires.

This is essentially awesome for user input and output. It could be used for binary input/output, step sequencers, and recording/reading what options are turned on or off. And since they can be connected to each other, if you connect two boards together, you can clock 16 bits in instead of just 8, and so on.



Kit Parts:

• 74HC595 Shift Register (serial in, parallel out)
• 74HC165 Shift Register (parallel in, serial out)
• 2x 1x8pin female headers with labels for connections
• 4x 1x2pin male headers for easy mounting on a breadboard
• 8 LEDs
• 8 switch spots - can use toggle or momentary switches - sold as separate kits on Tindie.
• R2, R10-R17: 9x 100 ohm resistors
• R1, R3-R9, R18-R23: 14x 1k ohm resistors
• Not pictured: 2 sockets for the ICs

Build Notes:

• 74HC595 Shift Register (serial in, parallel out): Remember to note where the notch is on the front so your pins are in the right direction!
• 74HC165 Shift Register (parallel in, serial out): Remember to note where the notch is on the front so your pins are in the right direction!
• 2x 1x8pin female headers with labels for connections: These are female headers and thus makes it easy to use breadboard wires to hook it to your system.
• 4x 1x2pin headers to for easy mounting on a breadboard: These are optional and are not electrically part of the circuit.
• 8 LEDs: Output from your program/circuit is shown on these LEDs as you’ve designated them.
• 8 switch spots: So we’ve allowed soldering spots for both 6x6mm momentary switches, and SPDT toggle switches. Either will work just fine and kits are sold separately! Momentary switches have two pairs of pins where one pair curves towards the other pair. One pair goes into the top two holes, and the other pair goes into the bottom two holes. (Or just look at the momentary switch pins and match it with the footprint on the board for easiest fit)
• R2, R10-R17 (100 ohm resistors): These are current limiting resistors
• R1, R3-R9, R18-R23 (1k ohm resistors): These are pull-down resistors
• We have tested this successfully with 3.3v.

Example Set-up:







Demo Code: http://tymkrs.com/code/ShiftMe_BitBang_Demo.spin

Assembly Video:



New to shift registers? Not sure how to use them?:

http://tymkrs.tumblr.com/post/53522451066/tymkrs-shift-me-chainable-shift-register-header-kit