Fig. 1

Interfacing Raspberry Pi 74HC595 Serial Shift Register

by Lewis Loflin

See the Youtube video Raspberry Pi and the 74HC595 Serial Shift Register.

Here we look into connecting a 74HC595 8-bit serial shift register with 8-bit latch to a Raspberry Pi. Fig. 1 shows the internal configuration.

# MSB out first!
def ssrWrite(value):
    for  x in range(0,8):
        temp = value & 0x80
        if temp == 0x80:
           GPIO.output(dataBit, 1) # data bit HIGH
        else:
           GPIO.output(dataBit, 0) # data bit LOW
        pulseCLK()        
        value = value <<  0x01 # shift left
    serLatch() # output byte
    return

Above is our serial shift subroutine ssrWrite(). It's nothing more than a for loop, a bitwise AND, and left-shift that sets or clears the dataBit pin, pulses HIGH then LOW the shift clock (pulseCLK), then after doing that 8 times pulses HIGH then LOW (serLatch) the latch pin. Here we shift out the most significant bit first.

Fig. 2

Fig. 2 shows the LED connections. The LED pattern is simply a reproduction of the binary pattern shifted into the 8-bit register.

while 1:
    temp = 1
    for j in range(0, 8 ):
        ssrWrite(temp)
        temp = temp << 1
        time.sleep(.2)

    for j in range(0, 8 ):
        temp = temp >> 1
        ssrWrite(temp)
        time.sleep(.2)

The main program turns on a single LED and moves it back and forth using left and right shift commands. This consists of an infinite while loop and two for loops.

Make sure you are in the proper mode for the GPIO!

To quote,

If you use pin numbers, you don’t have to bother about revision checking, as RPi.GPIO takes care of that for you. You still need to be aware of which pins you can and can’t use though, since some are power and GND.

If you use GPIO numbers, your scripts will make better sense if you use a Gertboard, which also uses GPIO numbering. If you want to use the P5 header for GPIO28-31, you have to use GPIO numbering. If you want to control the LED on a Pi camera board (GPIO5) you also have to use GPIO numbering.

In your code add the following, but use only 1!

import RPi.GPIO as GPIO  
  


# for GPIO numbering, choose BCM  
GPIO.setmode(GPIO.BCM)  
  


# or, for pin numbering, choose BOARD  
GPIO.setmode(GPIO.BOARD)

The program code is rpi_cylon.txt.