Lately I've been working on a design for an 8 button wireless controller for Node-RED based on the ESP8266 Node-MCU, that fits on a half size breadboard using as few parts as necessary. You can check it out here: GitHub - HaroldPetersInskipp/ESP8266-NodeMCU-8-Button-WebSocket-Controller: 8-Button WebSocket Controller for an ESP8266 NodeMCU to connect with a Node-RED server
The controller.ino
file contains the code for the ESP8266 NodeMCU
There is an accompanying Fritzing diagram and flow.json
file for Node-RED to receive the messages from the controller.