Arduino 74HC165 PSIO Shift Regsiter

So, you need a lot of digital input pins on your Arduino? You'd probably want to use some 74HC165 parallel-in/serial out shift registers. These can be daisy chained for tons of additional inputs for a diy piano or something like that. These are actually quite easy to setup with no external components(except if you connect some buttons to them), just some wires.

I only had an issue in the way that the values are read from the ICs by the Arduino. With two ICs hooked up in daisy chain mode, the first bit shifted in from the ICs starts with the second 74HC165(U3 in the pic) and the pin 11, then 12, 13, 14, 3, 4, 5,  6, then 11, 12, 13, 14, 3, 4, 5, 6 of the first 74HC165(U2). Once you get the ICs connected as in the scheme, pull each extra input pin on the 74HC165 to ground with a 10k resistor and then a button from +5v to the 74HC165 pin(like attaching any other button to a Arduino). Then upload the code from below and it should print the value of each button to the serial port. That code is from the Arduino website and may seem a bit complicated; look HERE for a simple example that does the same thing.

Pic:

Scheme I found

CODE:

/*
 * SN74HC165N_shift_reg
 *
 * Program to shift in the bit values from a SN74HC165N 8-bit
 * parallel-in/serial-out shift register.
 *
 * This sketch demonstrates reading in 16 digital states from a
 * pair of daisy-chained SN74HC165N shift registers while using
 * only 4 digital pins on the Arduino.
 *
 * You can daisy-chain these chips by connecting the serial-out
 * (Q7 pin) on one shift register to the serial-in (Ds pin) of
 * the other.
 *
 * Of course you can daisy chain as many as you like while still
 * using only 4 Arduino pins (though you would have to process
 * them 4 at a time into separate unsigned long variables).
 *
*/

/* How many shift register chips are daisy-chained.
*/
#define NUMBER_OF_SHIFT_CHIPS   2

/* Width of data (how many ext lines).
*/
#define DATA_WIDTH   NUMBER_OF_SHIFT_CHIPS * 8

/* Width of pulse to trigger the shift register to read and latch.
*/
#define PULSE_WIDTH_USEC   5

/* Optional delay between shift register reads.
*/
#define POLL_DELAY_MSEC   1

/* You will need to change the "int" to "long" If the
 * NUMBER_OF_SHIFT_CHIPS is higher than 2.
*/
#define BYTES_VAL_T unsigned int

int ploadPin        = 8;  // Connects to Parallel load pin the 165
int dataPin         = 11; // Connects to the Q7 pin the 165
int clockPin        = 12; // Connects to the Clock pin the 165

BYTES_VAL_T pinValues;
BYTES_VAL_T oldPinValues;

/* This function is essentially a "shift-in" routine reading the
 * serial Data from the shift register chips and representing
 * the state of those pins in an unsigned integer (or long).
*/
BYTES_VAL_T read_shift_regs()
{
    byte bitVal;
    BYTES_VAL_T bytesVal = 0;

    /* Trigger a parallel Load to latch the state of the data lines,
    */
    digitalWrite(ploadPin, LOW);
    delayMicroseconds(PULSE_WIDTH_USEC);
    digitalWrite(ploadPin, HIGH);

    /* Loop to read each bit value from the serial out line
     * of the SN74HC165N.
    */
    for(int i = 0; i < DATA_WIDTH; i++)
    {
        bitVal = digitalRead(dataPin);

        /* Set the corresponding bit in bytesVal.
        */
        bytesVal |= (bitVal << ((DATA_WIDTH-1) - i));

        /* Pulse the Clock (rising edge shifts the next bit).
        */
        digitalWrite(clockPin, HIGH);
        delayMicroseconds(PULSE_WIDTH_USEC);
        digitalWrite(clockPin, LOW);
    }

    return(bytesVal);
}

/* Dump the list of zones along with their current status.
*/
void display_pin_values()
{
    for(int i = 0; i < DATA_WIDTH; i++)
    {
        if((pinValues >> i) & 1)
            Serial.print("1");
        else
            Serial.print("0");

        Serial.print(",");
    }

    Serial.println();
}

void setup()
{
    Serial.begin(9600);

    /* Initialize our digital pins...
    */
    pinMode(ploadPin, OUTPUT);
    pinMode(clockPin, OUTPUT);
    pinMode(dataPin, INPUT);

    digitalWrite(clockPin, LOW);
    digitalWrite(ploadPin, HIGH);

    /* Read in and display the pin states at startup.
    */
    pinValues = read_shift_regs();
    display_pin_values();
    oldPinValues = pinValues;
}

void loop()
{
    /* Read the state of all zones.
    */
    pinValues = read_shift_regs();

    /* If there was a chage in state, display which ones changed.
    */
    if(pinValues != oldPinValues)
    {
     //   Serial.print("*Pin value change detected*\r\n");
        display_pin_values();
        oldPinValues = pinValues;
    }

    delay(POLL_DELAY_MSEC);
}