WEMOS D1 Mini Pro
I bought 50 from AliExpress a few years back for a couple bucks each.
I bought 50 from AliExpress a few years back for a couple bucks each.
Of course now that I'm looking around I see https://github.com/khoih-prog/ESP8266_PWM which seems promising (subdivides the second of two available hardware timers to allow PWM that isn't sensitive to other running code). So there's multiple workarounds (libraries, breakout boards) besides upgrading to an esp32.