I love the pimped Arduino IDE for ESP8266. I have the feeling that code runs much more stable than with the LUA firmware. To give something back to the community and to improve my C/C++ skills I wrote a library to address those neat and cheap 8x8 LED modules. It might not be my best code yet but I'm learning;-)
Read more here (with Video): http://blog.squix.ch/2015/04/esp8266arduino-max7219-8x8-led-matrix.html
And get the library here: https://github.com/squix78/MAX7219LedMatrix
I only tested it with two modules so far. Let me know if it works for more daisy chained moduls for you!
Please note: I had to get the current SPI code from github and patch my Mac OS X IDE with it, since the latest release does not yet contain important fixes...
Cheers,
Dani