‘Smart’ lighting with LEDs and Photocells — my first attempts at programming an Arduino

How have I never played around with hardware before? I’ve had some ideas in the past, but who has the time to sit down and learn electronics? They’re kind of complicated.

I had my first Arduino class about a week ago — two hours of learning that is outside of my wheel house. I have read some basic schematics and can tell the difference between a resistor and a capacitor but actually putting them to practical use and building circuits proved pretty tricky to wrap my head around…