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How to drive many leds with a few io-pins

From Just in Time

For any straightforward led matrix you can double the number of leds by using tri-state switching and parallel reversed leds.

The 12F509 Knight Rider uses this technique to switch 12 leds with only 5 I/O pins (the 6th pin is input only, so 5 is the max for the 12F509).

In the meantime, we have learned that this technique is called Charlieplexing. So we weren't the first..