Logically invert the pin?

Sat 2018.11.17

Wow! That is really cool!!

Ahhh, . . . . was it the additional nine shots that helped?

'but when I turn them off manually by sending zeros, first always stays green'

Would it be possible to jumper over the suspect Neopixel's data line, sending the data entry to the second in the series?

Haven't tried that, but don't see that it would cause an issue.

As you are about to guess, if the second Neo lights red, my guess would be the first Neo is bad. If it's green even more puzzling, and more thinking to do. . . .

Another thought, is it possible the array of data has become corrupt? What about setting element zero to black, and see if the remaining data illuminates the rest. Should that be successful, try just sending data to element zero only, three separate attempts, to see if each individual RGB can be set programmatically.

WS2812 is GRB
G require("neopixel").write(B5, [255,0,0]);
R require("neopixel").write(B5, [0,255,0]);
B require("neopixel").write(B5, [0,0,255]);

EDIT: Google is your friend:

https://arduino.stackexchange.com/questi­ons/32017/esp8266-nodemcu-first-ws2812-l­ed-lights-up-green

https://github.com/Makuna/NeoPixelBus/is­sues/11

Apparently, other boards and other software have had a similar issue. Not a consistent fix though.