whoops. sorry. hopefully this isn't way more hand holding than you counted on? i'm just hoping i haven't bit off more than i can chew. switched that code out. but in looking at the code i don't think there is anything to tell the arduino.app to read the pins when a pots values change. now this is the part i'm confused about do i use an analog read http://www.arduino.cc/en/Reference/AnalogRead which would only check the values coming out of the 4051 into the a0 port. or do i read all the values from the digital pins ? http://www.arduino.cc/en/Reference/DigitalRead. seems like analog since the digital pins are all 1/0 rather than variable.
thanks again for all your help i really do appreciate it. and i think if we get this thing rolling it could serve as a rad tutorial for other folks step by step wise.