High Level Conceptual Question - IoT, maker type projects

[MarkHaysHarris777]

Can someone with basic scripting experience and the ability to read pin-out diagrams buy some connectors and breadboards and get started today with that sort of tinkering using one of the Ubuntu or Debian builds presently available?

The simple answer is, yes.

... there are two easy methods for accessing the GPIO pins on the PineA64;  1) RPi.GPIO-PineA64 from github, and 2) the sysfs system.

The details really go beyond the scope of this discussion forum , but for starters , download the RPi.GPIO-PineA64 and build it (its easy) by following the easy instructions from github.  You will need to get python-dev first:

sudo apt-get install python-dev
sudo apt-get install python3-dev

This will get you started with GPIO on the PI bus. longsleep has developed a short script for converting Pine board connection names (PL7) to numbers numbers (359) that can be used with sysfs. 

Get started with the above, and then join us on irc chat for Q & A about specifics.  I have posted several GPIO related idea on this forum including pics ; feel free to check them out too.

One word of caution, the Pine board is a 3v3 system... DO NOT try to connect 5v (sensors nor anything else) from arduino land to the GPIO of the Pine, you'll blow the board, just like with the PI, without using level shifters.