The ESP8266 chip used in things like the Huzzah really is amazing. It’s three cheapest microcontroller I’ve ever bought, yet it has WiFi built in that boots up and connects to the network faster than any other device I own. My mobile and laptop take a good few seconds, but this is basically instant.
As for they E1.31 stuff, I’ve found two libraries that support it, which come with examples which make it really quick to get started. E.g if you want to just drive the LEDs, the have an example that does that for you. If you want to say use dmx to change the attributes of the patterns you are running, then it’s just a question of mappings the right channel number from the array to your variable
To get an idea what I mean, here are some examples
Quick and dirty thing I knocked up last night
For comparison, example of projects using wired dmx
For comparison - if you buy an off the shelf wired dmx to led driver you are looking at £30. That only handles 170 pixels, a single universe.
Comparable multi universe, WiFi enabled off the shelf kit cost considerably more