Thanks for the tag.
@Bigfoot1 youre on the right track - I did exactly what you did. Ran DWC buckets for about 1.5 grows before I got sick of using frozen water bottles every day to mitigate temps.
I used Uniseals (designed to make a liquid tight seal on the rounded buckets) and pvc pipe to rig up a DIY RDWC. I elected to use 2” pvc for the system and I set my pipe a little low - so the water level with a full res was 3” below the net pot. If I redid it, I’d go up to 2.5” below; it allows more water to be in the system and better fluctuation to have the maximum level a little higher up.
The only things you need are:
A hole saw (and drill) - get one big enough for the uniseals and also one small enough to run air tubing through the net pot lid (you want an easy way to get airstones into each bucket, drilling a hole through the top is ideal)
Uniseals for your desired pipe diameter
Pvc at the desired diameter
Pvc glue and any elbows to configure the system.
Cheap water pump (I used a $20 Vivosun pump)
A large tote (I used a 27 gallon one from Home Depot, it was ~$15)
Space your buckets to fit your space - get yourself an idea of how far apart/how close you want em. Once you drill, no take backs. I tried to give each plant a 2x2 square, but ended up a little off. I could only get 3 buckets comfortably into my 4x4. (Measure twice, cut once - don’t be like me 
)
I’ll see if I’ve got a diagram handy, but my process is in my journal (probably around late august/early September of 21)
By that spot in my journal it’s already set up, but I bet it wasn’t too long before there that I was building it.