1 . well , definitely could be faulty LEDs , but these were given to me and i ' ve never gotten faulty equipment before i ' ve swapped out between three of them , so i doubt it ' s that 2 . it ' s just a standalone breadboard , full size 3 . i did use a voltmeter and both pin 12 and the 5 v source put out the correct voltages , so i ' m guessing it ' s a circuitry error or the breadboard got hecked up somehow 4 . i tried it going through the vertical rail connecting with jumper cables , and then when that didn ' t work , i tried it wiring the voltage source and ground directly to the respective horizontal rail . 5 . i ' ll post some shortlyalso no worries , as i ' m pretty inexperienced at arduino stuff ! ! admittedly i ' m a little more experienced with circuitry programming i ' m a freshman ECE major and i ' ve been building circuits on this breadboard and doing circuits problems the entire semester , which is why this is so dang frustrating i guess lol