High Level Conceptual Question - IoT, maker type projects

[HayseedGeek]

Pine64 is the first SoC type system I've owned and I got excited when I heard about all of the different hardware connectors it offers- eular, i2c, ext, rpi-2, etc. because I've seen various maker type projects that fascinate me where folks using other boards like RasberryPi and Arduino, etc. connect to stepper motors and servos , that'll take input, say, from old WII remotes to do cool things. 

One video I saw showed a guy who bought used electric wheelchair motors from eBay to make a remote controlled lawn mower, for example. The Windows/IoT/Azure site has a project that uses, I believe, facial recognition, to manipulate the lock on an entry door. 

Most of these projects seem to use drop-in Python (or other scripting languages) scripts to manages all of the input and output signals.

I know Pine64 has the promise of the Z-Wave modules working soon and there are temperature and light sensors available- and I'm not particularly referring to that type of use, but not specifically ruling it out either. I've seen some of the GPIO discussion threads and will confess being completely lost, but I suspect that others doing such projects with other boards don't have that sort of expertise either. 

As I stated, I have very little experience with such projects, so I'm not asking for too many specifics at this point, but I am curious as to the current state of things, in terms of a noob completing these sorts of projects, generally. 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?

[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.

[HayseedGeek]

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.

[...]

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

[....]
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

Got it! Software installed easily, as promised. No 5v to GPIO 
I'm reading and learning what's out there and what I'll want and need for now. 
In the mean time, Pifm https://github.com/rm-hull/pifm seemed like a likely candidate as an easy start (I can slip a wire on a pin to use as an antenna I should hope), so I tried to compile it...and no dice.
It threw lots of error messages about casting Null to Int in the *.c file, so I assume even though the GPIO interface is consistent on the PI-2 connector, the internal addressing scheme for DMA and such is quite different on the Pine64.  Is there some reference I can use to port the RPi addresses used in that one source file to Allwinner A64 addresses? Or am I barking up the wrong tree there?

[MarkHaysHarris777]

It threw lots of error messages about casting Null to Int in the *.c file, so I assume even though the GPIO interface is consistent on the PI-2 connector, the internal addressing scheme for DMA and such is quite different on the Pine64.  Is there some reference I can use to port the RPi addresses used in that one source file to Allwinner A64 addresses? Or am I barking up the wrong tree there?

I think you're barking up the right tree... 

... and its all in the sources for RPi.GPIO-PineA64.  Back in the day of free software and before the open-source term came along, we would say, in true Jedi master style, "Use the force, read the source...   read the source Luke"

Yes the dts|dtb stuff on the PineA64 is completely different from the Raspberry PI !  It is after all, and completely different SoC manufactured by a completely different vendor; yes, an Arm design, but a completely different piece of hardware.   For instance, on the Raspberry PI there is no LCD back-light pwm  ( S-PWM PL10 ) on GPIO04 !  GPIO04 pin(7) on the PI bus, should be available for general use, but is not by default on the PineA64.