love those .. too funny
So, there are two options for controlling these now but I'm using the adafruit library available on git. My specific code to control the panel arrays is using a library that I wrote built on theirs to automate several desired behaviors like the scrolling text, counting down, and color slides / fades. As you know each pixel is individually addressable via rgb and brightness values.
At the moment my code base not only supports lighting but a cargo system and a 'bullhorn' that I've developed for the inspire so I can't upload a lighting only example for you at this moment.
The real hard part is to minimize all communications which thusly increases range. I can optionally attach to available wifi and communicate a thousand miles but I've got it running now in private mode at just under a mile.
oh, additionally .. There are three or four ways to code the ESP8266.
I'm using the Arduino compiler and associated 8266 libraries. It's the easiest way to go and has the most robust code base.