I feel like if you hard wired anything to the float then the wires would throw off how the float reacts to the change in density? Like the hanging wires would throw off the center of gravity and couldn't keep it consistent depending on how the wire hangs.
That's a good point. Especially if you coat the wires or put them in some kind of food safe sleeve or something. I suppose the trick would be to make it have enough weight/buoyancy that the force from the wire was negligible, but now we are probably talking something too large to fit in a thermal well.
I'll ponder some more...