Hydro doesn’t taste as good as organic, and it needs to be flushed or you ingest a lot of nitrates, which is likely carcinogenic. Flushing requires careful planning and a system designed for it. You can’t just treat it like a fridge full of food. With soil you can just leave stuff in the ground until you want to eat it.

I’ve poured a lot of time and money into the hobby, and have settled on organic soil with some simple drip for indoor growing.

The water use is about the same. As long as you’re indoor the water has nowhere to runoff/evaporate to.

IMO the benefits of hydro/Aquaponics are nonexistent. Also, the whole system is a pile of plastics. The tote and drain pipe in the linked article are not food grade plastic, which would scare me away from this system.

The automation is way way way overkill. Hydro is very easy to tweak. The nutrient profile is a tiny percentage of the labor, and a $3 battery operated temp/humidity display is plenty for keeping things nice for the plants. They show the high and low since last reset, which is all you need.

If I had any outdoor space with good sun I would set up a greenhouse, but since I don’t have that I run leds directly off of solar panels on my roof (dc-dc step ups and downs as needed).

Kind of cool to see them rise and set with the sun.