Use this forum to chat about hardware specific topics for the ESP8266 (peripherals, memory, clocks, JTAG, programming)

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By jwatte
#17048
If you need to use some GPIOs for your own purposes, then you won't have much other choice to use a module such as ESP-03


Sorry to chime in late, but this was a top hit on Google! Another option is to use an I2C GPIO expander chip.

Because I2C wants the bus lines to be tied high when idle, a 4.7k or 3.3k pull-up on each of the GPIOs would be about right. When you need to drive the LEDs, use pins 0/2 for I2C to tell the GPIO chip what to do.