The common Neopixels works fine with the ESP8266 and the code included in Nodemcu. The single 8mm Neopixels don't. My solution is to use an Arduino as a controller för the pixels, and let the ESP control the Arduino. To make this happen a LUA webserver is run at the ESP. This server makes it possible to send pulses with various lengths to Gpio2 depending on the users interaction with the webpage server. If the user clicks one button, a pulse of 100 mS is sent to Gpio2, if the user clicks another button the pulse is 200mS.