total newcomer with no electronics experience needing help

Using Arduino Project Guidance
1

i am a mechanical engineer tasked with a project using a nano board. using an array of 6 LDR's i would like to latch separate LED's in sequence depending which LDR is triggered. any help, design ideas or encouragement would be greatly appreciated.

2

Each LDR specifies a different LED sequence, or each LDR corresponds to one LED?

Shouldn't be too difficult.

since LDR's change resistance with light, you can put them between 5V and analog pins, and do a "read" of the analogvoltages.

Pseudo:

if analogRead(LDR1) is on:
sequence one
if analogRead(LDR2) is on:
sequence two
if analogRead(LDR3) is on:
sequence three
if analogRead(LDR4) is on:
sequence four
if analogRead(LDR5) is on:
sequence five
if analogRead(LDR6) is on:
sequence six

3

Seems fairly simple. You have 6 analog inputs, write a loop to continuously scan the LDR voltages, when a voltage passes your trigger point you write a digital output hi to the anode of a LED with cathode going to a 220 ohm current limit resistor to ground.

When do you want the LEDs to reset?

// do the setup stuff, define pins to be used, etc

void loop(){
value0=analogRead(0); // read LDR0
if (value0>=trigger_level) // if value is high
{digitalWrite (digital0, HIGH);} // set the output On.

// read the next input
value1=analogRead(1);
if (value1>=trigger_level)
{digitalWrite (digital1, HIGH);}

value2=analogRead(0);
if (value2>=trigger_level)
{digitalWrite (digital2, HIGH);}

// etc for 3,4,5
}
// decide when to turn them off ...