The pump is 120v AC. That is the only drawback for me, that I can't power it with a 12v battery in case the power goes out.
The turgidity sensor detects the thickness of the leaf so it can tell when it needs water before it visibly wilts. There are no root zone sensors, I use the temp/humidity sensor in the canopy area to control the climate in the grow tent. They get sprayed with water sometimes. You can put them in the root chamber but it wouldn't tell you anything useful anyway.
Everything is automatic except for mixing nutes and filling the reservoir. Eventually I plan to install a float valve and peristaltic dosing pumps for ph and nutes, so I won't have to do anything at all.
The arduino is connected to the internet via wifi, so it can log the data as well as send alerts. It could warn me if the reservoir level is low for example. Or use a vibration sensor to notify me if the pump is running continuously.
I use a 5 gallon bucket LPA system for cloning/veg. It cost me about $50 to build and there's not much point in using HPA for cloning anyway.
For the cooling I use those, yes. I attach a water block to one side and a CPU heatsink to the other side with thermal epoxy and then pump the water to a radiator in the root chamber via plastic tubing wrapped in foam insulation (pool noodle). I have a super-high-end waterpoof computer fan on the radiator in the root zone. The whole thing gets turned on and off with a solid state relay controlled by a thermometer in the root zone to maintain ~68F.
The induction doesn't produce that much heat. My temps are usually 75-78F. The problem is the root zone will equalize with the rest of the room, and 75 is enough to kill roots. Evaporation cools it a little bit, but if its 80 in your room its not going to be 68 in your root zone. And if it is, that means you have so much evaporation going on that the mist is basically gone after 3-4 seconds anyway. The only way anyone could ever pull this off is either by running a very cold room with AC, or by cooling the root zone directly. I chose to do the latter since some heat in your canopy can be a good thing. I'm not happy unless my canopy is pushing 80.
Some people have had good results using that felt smartpot material for making the root chamber out of. The extra water that soaks into the felt cools the root zone through evaporative cooling. I want to experiment with this, but I don't know where to buy that knitted felt material. I think this might be a good solution for growing outdoors in the heat, or just to save electricity.
The solenoids require a certain amount of pressure behind them to close properly, but otherwise they're just valves. They don't know or care what pressure is flowing through them.
I'm actually new to hydro, so I don't understand the biofilm very much. I'm using a 160gph pump to recirculate my res, which is kind of large for that purpose so it's heating up my water to the low 80s. I add botanicare's hydrogaurd, which is a beneficial root bacteria that the plants need and wont get without any soil media, so I have to add it. It also has the added benefit of taking over the res and preventing any other (bad) bacteria from growing. At first I had all sorts of algae and other things growing on the sides of my res. I have a cloth pre-filter and a 200 mesh filter before and after the pump, so I didn't have any issues with clogging, but it did take a while before I could get a handle on the slimy film that was growing all over my ph probe.
I do not grow organically. You can't use organic nutes in HPA. I use cal-mag, dyna-grow bloom, dyna-grow pro-tekt, and botanicare hydroguard.
I just bought one of those Roleadro 600w white LED panels for this next grow. Their efficiency is terrible but I'm hoping I can upgrade them to an efficient COB setup later. I'm always down for free shit, but I'm not sure how helpful I'll be able to be for you. I've been pretty lazy about implementing my own system so far.
Anyway, I just got some foam board to build a bigger root chamber today. I'll take some pictures as I build it and start up a grow log tonight or tomorrow.