8266 to control Arduino with 4 motors attached to motor shield v2

I am looking for alternative to using BLE since it’s not ready yet.

My project has 4 trains attached to a Adafruit motor shield v2. 4 sliders control speed of motors, 4 switches control direction and 2 other switches control a trolley mode for one of the trains and set a delay for trolley.

This works with hard wired pots and switches.

I need to mobilize this so it can also be controlled by android and iOS devices.

How would I use blynk to setup sliders for speed, switches for other functions all from a mobile device as well as keep other hard wired stuff connected.

Also how can I easily connect the 8266 to a network, discovery of network wifi … So it can be connected to.

Thanks in advance for your help