In case you missed it, the big news is that a minimal Arduino core is up and working on the ESP32. There’s still lots left to do, but the core functionality — GPIO, UART, SPI, I2C, and … ...

[David] used Oboe, a high performance C++ library for Android audio apps, to create the required waveform. The 8-bit data chunks he sent can only make up 256 unique messages, so he pre-generated them.

Basically any "Arduino compatible" that runs an 8-bit AVR with an 8-16MHz clock will work. Additionally, the Arduino Due and Teensy boards are compatible with the Neopixel lin.

He used an Arduino Mega and Adafruit Neopixel library combo to add and control the animations. To see steps in detail, check out the Instructable below. It seems worth a shot if you've got the skills.

“Additional hardware serial ports: No more bit banging!The need for a second UART port ( and one that is not shared with USB) on the Arduino Uno is so great that the “SoftwareSerial” library ...