Tiny Project Board with integrated WiFi
It took a while to figure out how to load code onto the development board, but it has worked really well since then.
My search for help got off track at first while searching for Arduino and ESP8266. ESP8266 is the wifi chip and is included with a number of different project boards. Things started to go better once I stuck with searching for NodeMCU.
What ended up working for me? (Using Windows 10)
Download the latest firmware from https://nodemcu-build.com/
Use the NodeMCU Flasher found on https://github.com/nodemcu/nodemcu-flasher to flash the latest firmware onto the device. (Do not use the firmware that is included with the NodeMCU Flasher download)
Then use ESPlorer to connect to the development board and upload your code. (You can download the source from Github, but I was able to find an already compiled version which made things easier. So search for that. In the end, I did not need to compile anything to get scripts running on the device.)
My unit required a baud rate of 115200 even though all the documentation I could find suggested 9600. (The baud rate actually changes while the device is booting, so you may see some jumble before it completes booting. You want to select the rate that allows you to send a command and see it repeated.)
In ESPlorer, there is a Save to ESP that does not work for me. The Send to ESP will send your script to it and run it once. It works most of the time, but you have to do it more than once sometimes. The upload button is what really works to get a file onto the ESP. Then you can run the file by typing dofile("filename.lua").
You can run commands but they will not print their results to the console unless you precede the command with an = sign or wrap it with print(...)
Use the documentation that is linked from the different modules on https://nodemcu-build.com/ to learn how to use the scripts once you have figured out how to add the scripts to the device. It can be found here: http://nodemcu.readthedocs.io/en/master/en/
Good luck and have fun!