The advantage of homebrew rigs.....

I love the AG, the simplicity, compactness, and user-freindliness of the product, it tells you when to water, feed, change bulbs, it's about as idiot-proof as a gardening appliance can get, and it only requires one power cord for all this good stuff

However.... there's always the chance that AeroGrow could run into some serious financial difficulties, worst case, even go out of business, if that happens, where do we get bulbs and baskets? (note to self, purchase a backup set of Elite+ bulbs soon, just in case) our invvestment in hydroponic technologies becomes nothing more than a really fancy table lamp

I'm sure someone with electrical knowledge could retrofit an AG hood with the standard flat CF bulb socket, so off-the-shelf flat bulbs can be used, but the fact remains that if AG goes down, finding bulbs will be more difficult

That's one of the reasons I build my homebrew rigs, I love hydroponics/Deep-Water-Culture rigs, if AG goes under, I still have the ability to grow veggies/herbs and such hydroponically, and since my homebrew rigs are built out of common hardware, I don't have to worry about proprietary hardware like bulbs and baskets and such, the lighting is supplied by conventional 4' shoplight strips, the aeration and water circulation components are standard aquarium supplies (air pump, powerhead, heck, I even have a canister filter I could use if I wanted to build a MegaRig....), and the seed support baskets are surplus Aerogrow baskets from previous kits

If AG was to die tomorrow and all the retail supplies were to vanish into the ether, I'd be depressed for sure, but I would still be able to grow hydroponically in my homebrew rigs, and I'd learn how to replace the proprietary AG bulb sockets with conventional pin-base CF sockets

another advantage of the homebrew rig is that you can create HUGE rigs (my biggest rig is currently a 13-pod rig)
the downside though, no bulb life timers, no nute timers, and multiple power cords are required