Beginning Arduino

Summary

Chapter 6 covered a lot of ground concerning the use of an external IC to supply extra output pins for the Arduino. Although you could have done these projects without the external IC, the shift registers have made life a lot easier. If you didn't use the shift registers, the code for these projects would be a lot more complex. The use of an IC designed to take serial data and output it in a parallel fashion is ideal for controlling lines of LEDs in this way.

Never be daunted by using external ICs. A slow and methodical read of the datasheets will reveal how they work. Datasheets at first glance look complicated, but once you strip out the irrelevant data, you'll be able to understand how the chip works.

In Chapter 7, you are going to ...