Driving 2 chains and keeping GPIO pins free for buttons?

1

I wish to drive 2 panels on a RPi Zero 2W. I don’t have my panels yet but am 99% sure each one only has inputs, so I am guessing that means 2 chains.

I would also like to have some buttons to control functionality.

I did buy an ElectroDragon active 3 port adapter board, which seems to use the whole GPIO header.

Seeing as I envisage only needing 2 of the 3 ports, can I use some of the GPIO pins for buttons?

Looking at the wiring diagram, it seems like there are 6 pins (The ones with the droplet icons) that are only used for chain 3, so could I just make sure that those 6 pins on the RPi are not long enough to engage into the adapter board, and just route them to buttons instead?

2

You are correct, the ED3 board is connected to the GPiO pins, but if you don’t use channel 3, the channel 3 pins will be free for other uses.