analog input issuses

Ok but, I just want you to test the buttons and switches without anything else on the arduino. When you know for sure that everything is working ,you can move them the analog pins. You need to see if you get either 1 or 255 when it is HIGH, and 0 for LOW

You could do a very simple ASCII "logical analyser".
Set all I/O pins (except pins zero and one!) to be inputs in "setup()", and enable their pullups.
In "loop()", digitalRead every pin and Serial.print its value as one or zero, and at the end of "loop()", call "Serial.println()" so all the results are on a single line.
As the program is running, simply ground a pin at a time, and check that the display in the serial monitor reflects this.
This program shouldn't be more than a dozen or so lines.

hey guys thanks for the advice i did the serialwrite thing to check if its picking up the inputs. and when i run the simple sketch it picks up all the buttons .
but when i put the end cct together it will not pick up the start stop button. but picks up all the others?
any ideas?

any ideas?

Post code.

its the code i posted at the beginning of the thread

hey so iv figured out that the problem is not hardware. its in the sketch. iv stared at it for hours and cant figure out what the problem is. can some one take a look?

Then how did you determine that it is software not hardware?

const int startPin = A0; //input for begin button
void setup ()
{
  pinMode(startPin, INPUT);
  Serial.begin(9600);
}

void loop ()
{
  Serial.println (digitalRead (startPin));
}

What does that do? (uncompiled, untested)

What is connected to digital pin 2?

i loaded the sketch and all buttons work. cept the start button.
so i changed the sketches buttons allocations, so changed the start and up around.
same story. what used to be the start buttons works now to increase the values,
but it still wont start when you press the new start button

hope that makes sense

other thing you should probly know is that i made a boo boo and stuck 9v threw the 5 inputs this is y im trying to use the analog input.
silly me.

Uh-oh!
You're assuming that the interrupt functionality of pin 2 transfers to A0?
Sorry.

ya the sketch didnt have a wake up function to wake the camera up after longer intervals so was goin to make pin 2 the wake up pin.

so any ideas

Use pin change interrupts, or replace the processor are the first two that spring to mind.
The second is my favourite.

pin change interrupts?
what does that mean?

what do you think about trying to write my own sketch?

Your start button code indicates it was written to be connected to one of the two external interrupt pins on the Arduino (pins two and three), but you said early on that you damaged pin two, so moved the button to one of the analogue pins.
All pins have a pin change interrupt capability which you could use, and I think if you look in the Playground, you may even find a library to help you.

By far the simplest option (for now) is to put the code back to how it was, and replace the processor.

i did think about getting a new board. i may do that if the pin interupt thing dont work.
thanks alot for all your help.

warrenf:
i did think about getting a new board

Note that 'getting a new board' and 'replacing the processor' are two different things.

ya i know. but a whole new board will probably be the easiest.

(Shrug.) Plugging a chip into a socket isn't rocket science, but it's your money.