A few years have passed with this thing twinkling its little heart out - pining for the interactivity I'd tinkered with, but never achieved. The microcontroller world has moved along, and since this thing had no real purpose anyway, I figure it's time to simplicate! 

Yes, I know that's not a word. It seems accurate, though: I'm going to complicate the display by simplifying its electronics. But what else does one do with a purposeless display, when one has ESP-01 modules sitting around doing not much of anything?

Step 1: rip out the dual-controller Moteino + Arduino Pro Mini.

Step 2: rebuild around an ESP-01.

Step 3: ... find something interesting to do with the display?

Maybe step 3 is generally unnecessary. I'll focus on the first two...

Microcontrollers removed...

Board stripped down...

ESP-01 added...

Fan wired back in.

Cool. A little programming later, and we're more or less back where I started - lights blinkin', purpose nonexistent. On the other hand, the microcontroller is now running at 80MHz with a proverbial boatload of RAM...