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@Kolban
One can use NeoPixels with an ESP-1 ...
The first is that although the hardware SPI is not exposed on edge pins, it is still there on the physically exposed ESP8266. In "theory" one could solder on some wires directly to the SMD IC. From my perspective, I'd discount this immediately ... but Ive seen it "talked about" in some forums ... I for one couldn't solder that finely.
The other option would, of course, be the 1 wire solution written in C code that had been mentioned before ... bypassing the use of SPI.
As I was thinking about SPI driven NeoPixels on an ESP8266, we may have distaste for that solution. It strikes me that the hardware SPI will now consume 4 pins for driving the NeoPixel as opposed to the 1 that is strictly needed. SPI has 4 pins:
Since we will be driving data down MOSI and ignoring the other 3 pins, that may be considered a waste if users are finding themselves pin constrained. We might also find ourselves getting stuck if users need hardware SPI in addition to NeoPixel driving. For example, if the data describing the colors of the pixels over time were on an SD card which was being read by hardware SPI, we would need to introduce some form of SS to decouple it from MOSI data that it would otherwise detect when communicating with other devices.