Or you could just run the code an a cheap copy of Arduino mega - more IO capacity than you are likely to ever need. Complete board about GBP 12 on an auction site near you. Mark G0MGX -----Original Message----- From: "Eric Söderman" <eric@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: 21/01/2014 11:29 To: "minima@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <minima@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Subject: [minima] Re: PTT Schematic On ebay you can buy i2c adapters for LCD for 3-4 dollars. Could save some pins, but maybe introduce unwanted noise. I don´t know. Eric SA5BKE On Tue, Jan 21, 2014 at 12:20 PM, Steve VK2SJA <vk2sja@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: I was thinking about this. The limited number of I/O lines on micro-controllers in general. I was sure that I had seen a way to multiplex switches onto the same data lines used for the LCD display data.