Pinout and Mode of Operation

Published September 10, 2016 © CC0

Playing night rider with three 74HC595s

Who isn't fascinated with shift registers and blinking LEDs? Using the 74HC595 I'll show you how to control 24 LEDs with three pins.

BeginnerProtip1 hour3,818

Things used in this project

Hardware components

74HC595

LED (generic)

Arduino UNO

Story

Back when I was going to electronics school in the 80's I built and installed a Night Rider lighting system in a friends camero using a bi-directional shift register to control the lighting effects. When I started experimenting with the Arduino and learned about how to control shift registers with the Arduino I wanted to simulate the Night Rider.

Pinout and Mode of Operation

In this project I use three shift registers to control 24 LEDs. The registers are connected together by taking serial out pin (pin 9) of the first shift register to the serial data input (pin 14) of the second register. Next you take the serial out pin (pin 9) of the second shift register to the serial data input (pin 14) of the third shift register.

The clock pin (pin 11) on all three shift registers are connected and driven by one output from the Arduino.

In this manner when you send the clock signal from the Arduino you will be causing the data to shift simultaneously in all three shift registers. Because a single call to the shiftOut() library function only shifts out one byte you will be calling it three times to update all three registers.

In my code I have a function "updateShiftRegister()" which takes care of setting the latchPin low, shifting out all 24 bits of my current led pattern, then setting the latchPin back high to update the LEDs.

This is the datasheet for the 74HC/HCT595:

Night Rider Code

/*
Using three 74HC595s to control 24 leds (outputs) on the arduino uno. 
This is an improved version by John Rogers
*/

int latchPin = 5;   // to pin 12
int clockPin = 6;	// to pin 11
int dataPin = 4;	// to pin 14

int numLights=24;
unsigned long light = 0;  // Bit pattern for entire display
byte b1 = 0;				// byte place holders for each shift register
byte b2 = 0;				// extracted from "light"
byte b3 = 0;

	

void setup() 
{
  pinMode(latchPin, OUTPUT);
  pinMode(dataPin, OUTPUT);  
  pinMode(clockPin, OUTPUT);
 // Serial.begin(9600);
}

void loop() 
{
	for (int i = 0; i < numLights*2; i++)
	{
		int shift = i;
		if( i >= numLights )	//if i is above numlights then wee need to start
		{						// moving back to the left.
			shift = numLights*2 - i - 1;
		}
		// Extract the bytes of the light patter to be sent out
		light = (long)(1)<<shift;
		b1 = (byte)((light>>16)&0xFF);
		b2 = (byte)((light>>8)&0xFF);
		b3 = (byte)((light)&0xFF);
		updateShiftRegister();	// shift out b1, b2 and b3
		delay(30);
	}
}

void updateShiftRegister()
{
   	digitalWrite(latchPin, LOW);
   	shiftOut(dataPin, clockPin, MSBFIRST, b1);
   	shiftOut(dataPin, clockPin, MSBFIRST, b2);
   	shiftOut(dataPin, clockPin, MSBFIRST, b3);
   	digitalWrite(latchPin, HIGH);
   	
}

Credits

David A Riewe

8 projects • 33 followers

Engineering Tech who enjoys hacking electronics, learning about new devices and programming. Founder of HackerSpaceTech

Playing night rider with three 74HC595s

Things used in this project

Hardware components

Story

Pinout and Mode of Operation

Code

Night Rider Code

nightrider.ino

Credits

David A Riewe

Comments

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Playing night rider with three 74HC595s

Playing night rider with three 74HC595s

Things used in this project

Hardware components

Story

Pinout and Mode of Operation

Code

Night Rider Code

nightrider.ino

Credits

David A Riewe

Comments

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