Test using tp-links to do raw wifi.
This looks interesting:https://sandilands.info/sgordon/capturing-wifi-in-monitor-mode-with-iw
To build the other half of this, for the ESP8266, please look here: https://github.com/cnlohr/MinEspSDKLib
Making build environment:
On the host system:
# sudo apt-get install build-essential subversion libncurses5-dev zlib1g-dev gawk gcc-multilib flex git-core gettext libssl-dev
Then somewhere unrelated...
git clone --depth=1 https://git.lede-project.org/source.git
make
And select your processor and wait.
Original attempt (failed because my GCC kept trying to link against libc)
Some combination of this works. Mipsel is needed for little endian stuff.
# sudo apt-get install gcc-mips-linux-gnu linux-libc-dev-mips-cross libc6-dev-mipsel-cross libc6-dev-mips-cross gcc-mipsel-linux-gnu gcc-multilib-mips-linux-gnu