I've been loaned a dainty Arduino Micro. Just 48 mm by 18 mm, it's tiny! Took all of 2 minutes to plug it in and test downloading the LED blink software. Very easy. So I'll be using this thing to test driving motor and reading sound input/detecting synch.
Specs:
Microcontroller ATmega32U4
Operating Voltage 5V
Input Voltage (recommended) 7-12V
Input Voltage (limit) 6-20V
Digital I/O Pins 20
PWM Channels 7
Analog Input Channels 12
DC Current per I/O Pin 20 mA
DC Current for 3.3V Pin 50 mA
Flash Memory 32 KB (ATmega32U4)
of which 4 KB used by bootloader
SRAM 2.5 KB (ATmega32U4)
EEPROM 1 KB (ATmega32U4)
Clock Speed 16 MHz
LED_BUILTIN 13
Length 48 mm
Width 18 mm
Weight 13 g
Hopefully that's enough grunt and memory for me to be reading a ~10kHz sample of an input NBTV waveform, detect and strip out the synch pulses, and drive a motor... oh, and detect IR signals, too. Will have a go.