I was playing lately a lot with the new ESP8266 CBDBv2 Evo Board and Arduino IDE. As from version 1.6.4 it looks to become a more stable environment solution for developping ESP8266 related projects so I was giving it a try for a MAX7219 8 Digit Display module driver implementation.
Youtube video: Arduino IDE - ESP8266 - MAX7216 LED Driver - YouTube
For more details: ESP8266 - MAX7219 Arduino IDE Driver