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I have a problem with the Arduino Uno.

I need to use a 4x3 keypad and 16x2 LCD together with an Arduino Uno. As 4x3 keypad requires 7 pins, I have defined pins 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 to it. A 16x2 LCD requires 6 pins but only 5 pins remain (9, 10, 11, 12 and 13). Pins 0 and 1 are used for serial.

Please suggest a probable solution.

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Welcome to Arduino SE! What exactly is your issue? Pin assignment? Please edit your question to reflect exactly what you need. Thanks! – Annonomus Penguin♦ Mar 21 at 14:50

1 Answer 1

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You could use a shift register to read the switches as outlined by the excellent tutorial Parallel to Serial Shifting-In with a CD4021BE. Quoting the summary:

Sometimes you'll end up needing more digital input than the 13 pins on your Arduino board can readily handle. Using a parallel to serial shift register allows you collect information from 8 or more switches while only using 3 of the pins on your Arduino.

So you would only use 3 pins to read the seven switches, which would leave you with 9 pins to play with, for the LCD.

In addition, you could use a similar method for the LCD, using a shift-out register, and use just 3 pins for the 6 inputs of the LCD. A tutorial for that is Alphanumeric LCD with Shift Register on Arduino – part 1, using the AlphaLCD library or 3-Wire Serial LCD using a Shift Register, which has no library, but provides code.

This would leave you with 6 pins free (out of the total 12 pins, if you exclude pins 0 and 1 for serial), after both the switches and LCD are wired up.

Of course, this solution requires you to purchase one or two shift (in and/or out) registers.

The Arduino IDE may come with a built-in library that use shift registers, but I am not sure about that. Maybe someone can confirm, or refute, this?

I hope that this helps.

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Is there any tutorial for LCD and CD4021 using Arduino LCD Library? – xcoder Mar 22 at 1:08
    
@xcoder - I've updated my answer. – Greenonline Mar 22 at 5:21
    
Thanks@Greenonline – xcoder Mar 22 at 9:08

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