lagerschaden

on Orangepi One you have to add a file like /etc/udev/rules.d/99-gpio.rules
SUBSYSTEM=="gpio*", PROGRAM="/bin/sh -c '\ chown -R root:gpio /sys/class/gpio && chmod -R 770 /sys/class/gpio;\ chown -R root:gpio /sys/devices/platform/sunxi-pinctrl/gpio && chmod -R 770 /sys/devices/platform/sunxi-pinctrl/gpio;\ '" add a group gpio and add the user to it, then you have rootless access to gpio

It would be GREAT if rootless access to gpio was integrated in armbian (just like in raspbian).
 
I made a little test on my Orangepi-One:
created a group gpio and added the user to the group gpio, then created the file /etc/udev/rules/99-gpio.rules, this makes the access rootless
# /etc/udev/rules/99-gpio.rules SUBSYSTEM=="gpio*", PROGRAM="/bin/sh -c '\ chown -R root:gpio /sys/class/gpio && chmod -R 770 /sys/class/gpio;\ chown -R root:gpio /sys/devices/platform/sunxi-pinctrl/gpio && chmod -R 770 /sys/devices/platform/sunxi-pinctrl/gpio;\ '" Edit (02/09/2018): for later versions of armbian the file must change (tested with 4.14.18 and 4.14.65):
# /etc/udev/rules.d/97-gpio.rules SUBSYSTEM=="gpio*", PROGRAM="/bin/sh -c '\ chown -R root:gpio /sys/class/gpio && chmod -R 0770 /sys/class/gpio &&\ chown -R root:gpio /sys/devices/platform/soc && chmod -R 0770 /sys/devices/platform/soc'"  
Now you can use the access on the bash for the PIN PA12 (calculation see https://linux-sunxi.org/GPIO)
echo 12 > /sys/class/gpio/export # enable access to PA12 sleep 0.1 # wait some time to become gpio12 active echo out > /sys/class/gpio/gpio12/direction # PA12 is output echo 0 > /sys/class/gpio/gpio12/value # PA12 is low echo 1 > /sys/class/gpio/gpio12/value # PA12 is high echo 12 > /sys/class/gpio/unexport # disable access to PA12 My skills in programming are not good enough  to transform this to C, C+, Python etc, but you don't need any root privileges.

I have the same problem, need rootless acces to GPIO with python.
I use pyH3 from https://github.com/duxingkei33/orangepi_PC_gpio_pyH3 on an Orangepi One
 

4 cores:
___ ____ _ ___ / _ \ _ __ __ _ _ __ __ _ ___ | _ \(_) / _ \ _ __ ___ | | | | '__/ _` | '_ \ / _` |/ _ \ | |_) | | | | | | '_ \ / _ \ | |_| | | | (_| | | | | (_| | __/ | __/| | | |_| | | | | __/ \___/|_| \__,_|_| |_|\__, |\___| |_| |_| \___/|_| |_|\___| |___/ Welcome to ARMBIAN 5.35 user-built Debian GNU/Linux 8 (jessie) 3.4.113-sun8i System load: 0.37 0.24 0.10 Up time: 2 min Memory usage: 10 % of 494MB IP: 192.168.3.157 CPU temp: 41°C Usage of /: 82% of 1.1G Last login: Sat Nov 25 16:49:11 2017 from xxxxs-ubuntu.fritz.box pi@orangepione:~$ uname -a Linux orangepione 3.4.113-sun8i #4 SMP PREEMPT Wed Nov 22 13:45:28 CET 2017 armv7l GNU/Linux pi@orangepione:~$ cat /proc/cpuinfo Processor : ARMv7 Processor rev 5 (v7l) processor : 0 BogoMIPS : 1942.85 processor : 1 BogoMIPS : 1942.85 processor : 2 BogoMIPS : 1942.85 processor : 3 BogoMIPS : 1942.85 Features : swp half thumb fastmult vfp edsp thumbee neon vfpv3 tls vfpv4 idiva idivt CPU implementer : 0x41 CPU architecture: 7 CPU variant : 0x0 CPU part : 0xc07 CPU revision : 5 Hardware : sun8i Revision : 0000 Serial : 540078678620542709ce pi@orangepione:~$