In: Electrical Engineering
Explain how a shift register may be used to expand the output capabilities of a processor when only utilising a few pins
Here the total explaination of how a shift register may be used to expand the output capabilities of a processor when only utilising a few pins
Perhaps using a chip like 74HCT595 which has the shift register and latch. The minimum pins you need on the MCU are Data, Clock and Latch and all are outputs. The sequence is set Data, Pulse clock and repeat until all bits are output, finally pulse Latch to transfer the current state to the outputs. The outputs will remain stable until the next data are transferred. Since the chip has 8 bit registers you are only using 3 MCU pins to get 8 output bits. The Chip has a shift register has an output so you can extend to 16 or 24 bits; as the Clock and Latch are all driven in parallel you will likely need to buffer these line to scale any further.
To perform the input version you could use the same Latch and Clock, just add a Data In pin, you would either need to find an input version of the chip or build out of separate shift register and latch chips. If you do not need synchronisation of input signals then the input latch is not necessary, unlike the output where the latch is essential.