The CD4021 is a common parallel-in serial-out shift register. You can get them at
digi-key
or many other electronics retailers. They give you multiple inputs all for the price of only 3 pins on the micro-controller. Check out our
introductory tutorial on shift registers
to get started. These chips are born to be
Daisy-Chained
, which is what we do with them in our
AlphaZed Keyboard
.