Welcome aboard mike. What are you wanting to grow in your system? NFT is not, in general a favorable system for larger plants such as tomatoes, green peppers or eggplant. It can be done, but doesn't work great. for smaller plants like sweet cherry peppers and herbs it's great. For the bigger ones, some form of deep water culture (DWC) is generally the easiest to work with. Either type of system can be set up for $100 or less with the water pump generally being the most expensive component. Personally, for NFT, I use vinyl downspouts for the troughs, but you can have problems with root blockage. On the upside they're cheap. I believe about $1 per foot. I drill my holes (for 2" netpots) at 8" on center and cut each length into 5 foot sections for ease of handling. For DWC, a large-ish sterlite container can probably easily grow 4 to 6 tomatoes, green peppers, or eggplant. The trick there is to train the stems away from each other so the leaves have ample room. I am growing 4 tomatoes in a 32 gallon rubbermaid trashcan and have grown as many as 6 in it. At the same time I currently have 2 Roma tomatoes in a smaller sterlite container but I'm not sure they'll thrive as well because, eventually, the roots will start to consume a lot of the available space where the nutrient currently resides. This thread shows my NFT and trash cans systems from a few years ago. I have made a number of improvements on the NFT. The can is pretty much the same. This thread shows my smaller DWC system and my NFT for this year. I am also growing some plants in the trash can but I don't believe it's shown in the thread.
As for lighting, I have grown tomatoes very successfully in a south facing window here in NC. you'll only be restricted by how much glass is available. Outside of that, my experience with indoor growing is very limited.
Provide us with some questions and feedback on where your interests take you and myself or some of the othes will surely do our best to help you out.

grizzman: thanks for the reply! I am very interested in lettuce, basil and other herbs, tomatoes, eggplant, and hot peppers. Those are my main interests right now.

I really like the enf system that you posted outside with the 17 plants. Really neat. That's what I'm looking for.

So you're saying a system like the enf you have outside is good for lettuce and basil? While the DWC like the one I posted above would be good for the larger plants?

Also, would it be possible to have my systems outside year round since I live in Florida?

If this is the system you were linking to (it came up page not found for me):

then yes about the DWC question, though you'd have less plant sites and preferably a deeper tub. I prefer sterlite over rubbermaid because the plastic they use is stiffer so the side wall are less likely to buckle out, but you have to paint or otherwise cover (aluminum foil) the outsides to block light.
My outside EnF is doing wonders with my basil right now. As for Lettuce, I suspect it would work fine. Letttuce is generally a cool weather crop (late fall / early spring) so I don't normally grow it.
You can definitely grow outside in Florida and take advantage of the abundant sun offered. But you also have to deal with the heat. There are several FL farmers who participate on this forum so maybe they can discuss some of the trials and tribulations they've encountered doing so. Basically you want to keep the nutrient solution somwhere just below 80 degree which, as I understand it, is difficult in FL. Things that help are: bury your rez, cover the trough or flood tables with aluminum to reflect radiant heat, use insultation board generously, add frozen two liters of water to the rez, and plumb the system such that the main rez is inside while the remainder is outside. I'm sure there are other means, those are just the first that came to mind.

That's the system, yes. I see. However, if I do end up using it indoors, that is a fine setup?

How many plant sites max in that size container for tomatoes, eggplant, pepper? I assume lettuce and basil would do fine in a container with that many sites.

How will I know if there's enough sunlight in the room throughout the day? If there's not enough, what would you suggest for lighting that wouldn't break the bank?

Thanks for being so helpful!

I would only put one tomato plant, or two peppers/eggplant. The amount of fruit you get is mostly based on square footage and light, and tomato plants should have at least 4 sq ft. That's just my recommendation, but I don't grow that setup so get some other opinions! :)