ESR meter with Arduino

I've built the circuit on a breadboard and it works fine. But for production use I'm aiming at eliminating the whole arduino and building a board with a stand alone atmega 328.

The problem is, I can't really decide on how to build the power supply:

I understand that a clean supply voltage is crucial, so just hooking up a 4*AA-battery-pack is out of the question.

But do I have to power the circuit with 5V or will 3.3V also work (with some adjustments to the code, of course)? And if so, can I use a switching regulator instead of a linear one?
The Arduino as well as other ESR-meter-projects (including Le Hung's) use linear regulators, so maybe using a switching regulator might not be a good idea, because of the ripple it might introduce. Then again, maybe this issue could be addressed with a few caps..

Any input on this is appreciated!

Cheers,

Ali