I see what you are getting at, and the way to make your life easier is pick a nute system that is simple and stable over time. I love the Canna Aqua for that reason.
Engineering student... lol... you will end up like my dad, who is a mechanical engineer with MIT credentials and has his tomato plants on a self-watering system that turns on when the conductivity between a pair of probes stuck in the pots drops below a set point, and he's got the whole thing hooked up to a chart recorder. lol! I told him though, you've got to compensate for background conductivity of your res solution, and enter that as a constant, or your numbers are useless! I think he should switch over to a photo sensor that turns the system on after a period of sustained high light intensity. But I'm not an engineer... lol!