I ordered the 4 button pad with the pcb here:
SparkFun Electronics ... ts_id=9277
I am trying to use these buttons with an Arduino Mega. I am in need of a starting reference point in wiring up the pcb to the Arduino. If there is a tutorial out there, that would be nice. Thanks.
Well the link you posted is f*ck'd but I presume you are looking for something like this:
http://www.arduino.cc/playground/Code/Keypad
Mowcius
I would think this is the one he tries to link to: Button Pad 2x2 - Breakout PCB - COM-09277 - SparkFun Electronics
There is a link to the schematic on that page. As for tutorials I didn't really find one that fit at the moment in the playground, but you will need to look into multiplexing LEDs and probably debouncing buttons. Hard to say as I don't know what you know about this. But anyway I found some links for you as a more generic starting point:
For button debouncing, there is a nice example here: http://arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/Debounce. Another one here (personally I like the former better) Arduino Playground - SoftwareDebounce
Maybe also read up on pull-up or pull-down resistors (and LEDs? Bottom of the page): http://www.seattlerobotics.org/encoder/mar97/basics.html
FYI, the arduino have internal pull-up resistors that can be activated: http://arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/DigitalPins
As long as you don't PWM the LED's it should be pretty straight forward producing the 7 main colors, once you have got the current limiting resistors right. Slightly more complicated with PWM and multiplexing, since you have to implement that in software. But not at all impossible or particularly difficult. There is (probably) lots of forum threads about that. The hardware PWM is no good with multiplexing.
As for the RGB LEDs, take care that the pinout will fit that breakout board. As far as I can see that board is made for LEDs with the common pin as pin nr. 3 (or 2, depending on from which side you count). I bought RGB LEDs on several occasions (but from the same shop) which didn't have this configuration. Even pin #3 was longer than the others (usually signifying the common one). My LED's common connection was at the end (luckily they all were the same). Not hard to find out, and I wanted to make my own PCBs anyway so for me it didn't matter.
the Button Library makes life easy for a lot of things.
http://www.arduino.cc/playground/Code/Button