To get comfortable using the various components in the kit, I started by using a pushbutton to control the power to the LED; then replaced it with the potentiometer to dial the power up and down - finally, I combined the two which you can see below in the video and the corresponding code block.
I wanted to get the basic photoresistor sensor to work, but had a hard time with this one. At first, I had not wired my LED correctly to ground and after fixing that, the LED lit up; however, when I covered the photoresistor with my finger, the LED did not dim.
But it turns out it needs to be super dark in order for it to dim a lot since it is very sensitive to ambient light. I put a black glove over the photoresistor and it dimmed a good bit, took a reading and then removed the glove, allowing the LED to glow brightly and took a much higher reading. Video included below the code.
For this, I wanted to set up a situation where, when a button was pressed, the photoresistor would take a light reading and convert that to LED brightness. When the button wasn't pressed, the photoresistor would not engage and have a 0 reading (LED if off). The setup required a bunch of wires so the picture on the setup isn't very easy to see (I should use fritzing to do this!). A video of the button and sensor in action is below. As noted above, the photosensor needs to be covered with something really dark (a finger isn't enough) to get a noticeable reduction in light reading.
This process took me a long time ... I was much more comfortable with the buttons, switches and potentiometer but the sensors were tricky. I didn't know what to expect with the sensors and I only wound up working with the photosensor. I didn't have a force sensor in my kit and I couldn't get the flex sensor to work unfortunately. But it was a good learning exercise to connect the button (something I like) to the photo sensor and see if the code with the if statements actually worked. It finally did!
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