Hi All, very new to programming and heltec devices. im using one of the new Heltec V4.3.1 board with GPS, Oled, Lora … im needing to connect quite a few external devices to this for my little project, couple of BCD switch, RTC, GPIO input for trigger and RO from a RS484, so all in all about 12 inputs. i’ll be honest ive yelled and screamed at Ai help trying to get answers and they just go round and round and contridict. so asking for some helps from people not machines 
As i still need the Lora, GPS, Oled all operational i have to steer clear of FEM Lora , GPS pins and all the rest so i can avoid crashes and issues. Can anyone tell me if what im trying to do (12 or more) spare GPIOs are available or do i need to look at perhaps a multiplexer for the 2 x BCD switches to cut down on the GPIOS im asking for. thanks in advance for your help (and patience)
Heltec Lora 32 V4 GPIO available pin
It is quite likely that there have been no responses to your post because the question is a little too general in nature. If you are new to programming, you should probably start by working with existing code examples for the sensors you want to use, individually and one at a time. When you’ve established what each sensor requires, you can start building your specific application, again by adding sensors one at a time. If you run into trouble at any point, you may then be able to formulate a more specific question.
If you’ve not already found it, a good place to start when it comes to usable pins would be the ESP32-S3 datasheet. As you note, you will then probably need to consider which pins are already allocated to specific functions on the Heltec board with which you are working to determine which pins might actually be available for your application. Some pins that are pre-allocated to specific functions on a Heltec board might still be available if you do not require that function, and others will not be available for anything else regardless of whether you use the pre-allocated function or not. Unfortunately, you’ll often only discover which situation applies through trial and error.
And then, yes, you may need to look for some sort of multiplexor to configure all those devices, in which case an I2C port expander might be a good option. This may nonetheless involve another level of complexity that you’ll need to work through methodically.