Hi @ll, I got an old railroad switchbox controlboard which originally was connected to a heap of relays. I need to revive it using todays electronics. At the moment I favor an Arduino ATmega for control. The switchbox control has around 100 push-buttons that I have to read in. No more than two push-buttons should be pressed simultaneously. Question 1 - how would you do that? I was thinking to use two or three chains of shift registers (the 4021 or 597 mentioned in the subject). I am not so much into soldering so I'd prefer to use some well-designed prefabricated boards for the task (instead of learning how to design PCBs myself, which might or might not work out in time). But my search parameters did not find me anything useful. Question 2 - Do you know of such a PCB? Ideally it would be supplemented by a library to adress it easily, but that is not a must. Thanks in advance, Walter
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I suggest a I2C IO board. It is simple to build a chain of IO boards and it is simple to use with an Arduino or a normal AVR board. https://de.aliexpress.com/item/PCF8574-IO-Expansion-Board-I-O-Expander-I2C-Bus-Evaluation-Development-Module/32647794394.html It costs 1€ per board
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But if it should be a 74595 shift Register, it also is very cheap: https://de.aliexpress.com/item/74HC595-Shift-Register-Breakout-CJMCU-595-8-bit-shift-register/32807747744.html
Hi Thomas, thank you so much for your answers! I will consider those boards that you mentioned, the I2C looks tempting. The only downside on those options is that they just provide 8 connections. The I2C board allows for 8 different adresses, so I would need at least two separate buses to add up to my approximately 100 input pins (2x8x8). Therefore, if anyone can point me to an input board with even more pins provided, I would be grateful! Cheers, Walter
Hi Walter Walter H. wrote: > The only downside on those options is that they just provide 8 > connections. Yes, this I2C boards are limited. I've found two other boards with 16 x IO, but this is also insufficient https://de.aliexpress.com/item/OPRN-SMART-PCF8575-IO-Expander-Module-I2C-to-16IO-I2C-to-16-bit-IO-expansion-breakout/32804822741.html https://de.aliexpress.com/item/-/32859752451.html ==== So it would be the best choice this 595 board as suggested bevore: https://de.aliexpress.com/item/74HC595-Shift-Register-Breakout-CJMCU-595-8-bit-shift-register/32807747744.html
This one seems to have 3 address Pins so you can use 8 boards. Each board has 16 IO. And each IO can work as Input or Output (real GPIO). And it costs only 80 Cent! https://de.aliexpress.com/store/product/MCP23017-Serial-Interface-Module-IIC-I2C-SPI-MCP23S17-Bidirectional-16-Bit-I-O-Expander-Pins-10Mhz/716258_32828604912.html
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