@beerbelly: first off thanks for your patience and helping me with this
So basically you can load up 1's and 0's in the first 74HTC595 and when you latch it, the 1's and 0's go to the next 74HTC595, and the CS is basically a gate, restraining the data from being latched. Correct?
Is the data another word for latch, or to send the stored bits out? or is it to enable a 1 pulse when the clock "ticks" if this is so then where is the latch signal or does it just go out every time the clock "ticks"?
if each 74HTC595 is connected in series, meaning each clock is connected to the previous clock, then if you "tick" the first clock, wont it "tick" the rest of the 74HTC595 clocks at the same time?
So say I do a 0010000 it would pulse the third pin on the first 74HTC595, then would would stop it from sending that same signal to the next 7HTC595 and so on?
or is that what the CS is for? so you send a string of bits to the first 74HTC595, followed by a CS pulse witch stops the first 74HTC595 from outputing those bits to the second 74HTC595?
I found the 74HC595's for 20 Cents here:
https://www.taydaelectronics.com/74...ster-ic.html?gclid=COG_1bT7u7YCFeZxQgod5HIAHA
However I dont how reliable the site is or not.
Also what about using a 1:16 demultiplexer? or would this start that control signal problem I stated before?
Also if if I did a 128x128 grid it would require 32 of these 74HCT595's 16 for the rows and 16 for the columns. This doesn't seem very efeciant, or am I wrong?
However so far your system of doing this seems the most simplistic so far.
Also if I did a 128x128 grid and say I had 4 "cells" or grid points per inch, that would make for a 32" x 32" inch grid