If you use drain to waste you dont need to worry about it. Mix the nutes and your done..nothing comes back so nothing needs checking or adjusting.

I am currently us dwc but am looking to other styles as well when I plan to expand.

Man, I am replying to a lot of your questions!

I would say look towards the companies growing
hydroponically in Sweden. They do a lot with automated controls (at least from
what I have seen). I have seen them running a lot of different nutrients mixing
controls.

Also, check out the Maximum Yield magazine. They tend to
have a lot of good articles around this (not all the time but a good amount).

If you are looking for automation it is all about PRICE! I
would recommend Googling it for a little bit. It is quite easy to just buy a Raspberry
PI and programing it yourself.

IN FACT, you would really have no programming to do. I now
more than a couple guys that do this with their house plants and have a web
portal they can check into that I can give you the code for or point you at
them for help.

What a lot of commercial growers do is Ebb and Flow or Nutrient
Film Technology (NFT). Both are easy to setup once you get the hang of
everything and a lot less nutrient wasting. With DWC types of systems you end
up dumping water every couple of weeks or so depending on your measuring. This
can lead to a lot of nutrient wasting even if you have a good handle on pH ad
EC balancing.

I started with RDWC and once I made the switch to NFT I wouldn’t
god back! I had over 14 containers I had to constantly be mixing and it was a
pain.

Also, if you are going commercial I would recommend looking
into mixing your own nutrients. Crop King is a great place to start (https://www.cropking.com/).
They will sell you a recipe for your plants (around 200 buck USD I think) and
then you just use a scale to measure out NPK and micro nutrients.

Let me know if you want me to point you at some automated
systems and I can do that too!

jeremiah, I had tried to call you but got your voice mail. when you get a chance can you reach back to me. thanks!

I have returned your call. For some reason Google Voice said that you were calling about a circus in its transcription, which is why it has taken so long for me to call back.