ESP8266 Community Forum

Anyone having ideas for driving 74HC595 shift register with just 2 GPIOs from ESP-01? Actually, I would like to upload defined stages (eg: 10001000, 11110000) to drive 8 leds.

Besides that, ff you have other ideas (including hw solution) in controlling 8 independent LED from ESP, I would like to learn how to do it.

You can use TX pin as 3rd GPIO, and it will work.

Personally, I prefer I2C GPIO extender such as MCP23017, it can be easily attached to ESP-01 using only 2 pins.

It's misprint I want to say RX pin, in that case debug output will be available and you can use additional pin. Pins extenders is a good choice also, of course.