Despite a wealth of tutorials for setting up and writing code for the ESP8266 WiFi module, there has not been much of anything on programming this cheap wireless module with the Arduino IDE ...

If you want to get started with motion sensors and the like, ESPHome makes it incredibly easy to build your own sensors.

On the other hand, if you find reading NTC thermistors to be the more interesting part, you’re in luck because [Davide] has more information about that along with a modified ESP8266 Arduino library.