Where do you work on your Kosmo?

I’m new here, it’s lovely to see such an active community for such a budget friendly way in to what is traditionally a very expensive hobby!
The question I have though, is where does everyone work on their projects?
I’m very lucky to have a workshop (well, a barn on a farm) that I’ve principally used for cars and bikes up to now, but my Peugeot 205 project is nearly “finished” (driveable and MOTd at least) and I’m going to clear the workbench and use it to start building a synth.
Obviously not everyone has the luxury of such a space, so I’m wondering how everyone else has found space for it, especially people who live in flats. I live in a 2 bedroom cottage on my own and wouldn’t be able to find space in here because I WFH so my desk is already full!
Here is a terrible photo of my workshop, you can see the workbench at the left hand side, it’s actually my friend’s old hardwood kitchen table.

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I have pretty limited space myself. I decided to go the “kosmo as furniture” route - I finished it to the best of my abilities and I can still stack things on top of the case.

I have a workbench in the garage but it is too cold out there in the winter so I only paint, sand, and do woodwork type things when the weather permits.

My soldering station is right in front of my computer, so I have to push my keyboard out of the way when I want to solder. Not ideal, but I have my own office to clutter up so I can’t complain.

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I have a house. My electronics bench is what used to be my mother’s sewing table, in an upstairs room. I had my synths there until recently, but the Kosmo was threatening to become too large for that, so it got moved into the basement. I’m pretty sure it’s still there, but it’s pretty cold down there in the winter so I haven’t spent much time there lately. I do have another (non DIY, non expanding) synth upstairs though.

I have woodworking tools and a workbench in my garage, but that’s REALLY cold in winter. I can do some of that in the basement, though.

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Lucky you, I wish I could get access to a workshop but it’s really not that easy in central Nuremberg. I already did gearbox repairs on my motorcycles on the street :laughing:

So, my girlfriend and me share a 75m2 apartment with a 3m ceiling height and three rooms. One is a storage room and both of us have a separate room, this way each of us can do whatever they want in their own territory and there is no fight that I am spamming the living room with rubbish :laughing: (maybe the secret of 15 successful years :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: ) My room acts as the entertainment room though, we only have one TV and the Super Nintendo, Raspberry Pi Retro Gaming Centre, Wii (U) and PlayStation 2 are connected to it.

I have built a high sleeper which is completely mounted on the wall and can be folded up (see the last picture), so I can sleep alone when I work late in the night. Underneath the bed is my electronics workbench where I do most of the DIY stuff with all my instruments and heavy tools like drill press, grinder etc.

So all in all, this is basically the 20m2 where I do everything. A standing desk with two monitors for doing physics and coding. Of course, it’s a bit annoying since the modular synth is taking up a lot of room, so I put it here and there and everywhere but I am planning to throw out the IKEA Expedit and make room for at least two more cases and keyboards to make music :wink:

Here are some pictures:



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I’m in a house in the country, I use the garage for woodcuts, paintings… (when the weather is nice), and in the house I have a room for music with my guitars, basses, amps … a computer corner with a mixer table to record, a place for my Kosmo, a huge cupboard filled with bending toys and other DIY machines experiments, and a small workshop with my all my components, boxes for all recovered electronics …

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I have a garage, but I leave the car outside. It’s full of tools, gardening gear, paint, a trailer, bicycle bits, old boxes and other assorted junk. It even has a pit in it if I need to do an oil change. Currently I have things set up on two trestle tables - one for completed instruments, the other for the scope, iron, components and works in progress. It gets cold in there, so it’s beanies and jackets and an hour or two at a time. Sometimes when the weather is nicer I like to brew beer, so I pack all the electronics up into a big plastic box and pull all the beer making stuff out of a different box. I have some ideas to make a bunch of flight cases to make the whole process easier…

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lucky to live on the north coast , in the mid west so I have a basement it affords me a nice work space and jam room .

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front porch of large porch house and ventilated guest room wall of synth modules and okay backyard

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I have seen your module’s wall, but you have also a enormous component’s wall !!! whhhaaaoouu :slight_smile:

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been collecting for some time now .

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I have my own room downstairs for all hobby related stuff. There is my table with all the tools and enough light, a large shelf with a lot of part compartments and a second table for the synth stuff. As you can see I have a lot ob hobbies, not only synths and electronics, but also figure painting, RPGs, board games and making music.

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It actually just doesn’t seem like an easy hobby if you’re super limited in your space. I lived in Berlin for a little while and the average apartment there would oblige you to solder in your bedroom, or maybe you could get another room for it if you could afford the rent. But Australia is a land of big backyards and urban sprawl. I have a large garage, which I have to share with others, but it’s plenty large enough to solder and to play music. I don’t feel like I should do it in the house because I don’t know if it’s ventilated well enough. I often breadboard stuff inside though.

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There’s many challenges which when overcome can let the Kosmo out of me. I’ve thought of the Kosmo like a pet/child since the VCO was announced. Two years and it’s clear to me it will be more savored than I even could’ve predicted. There was expected to be a shorter set up time.

I have an apartment in the Northeastern United States in a very dense city where the propery values make anyone who’s not experienced getting one think is a joke. It still is a joke. My apartment is a one bedroom which is increasingly getting to be a trap for me set by all my belongings where I’ll be buried underneath them and my demise won’t be noticed for a while. At the time I began planning work on my Kosmo I had to clear space for building synths and playing synths. I still do. There’s a lot of potential when the space gets properly used. My bedroom could be a secondary area for any synths that don’t fit in the living room. That will be useful for my miscellaneous synth projects but it would be nice to imagine them all fitting in the living room. As the living room goes it’s got a hip height table with an enormous horizontal area. I meant it to be a DJ area but my priorities have moved to that being a synthesist area. The horizontal area was prepared to fit a turntable case. That can be resourceful for in emergencies I need a desktop computer with multiple monitors. When I get the living room properly used the living room is the best place for my Kosmo and additional music Islands (Hainbach made the term Islands for working with gear in vertical set-ups and I’ve adopted the term. Thanks.) I’ll do my soldering safely either in the living room or the bedroom with a ventilating system. I’m not used to setting up for a hobby and so many questions on my mind have overwhelmed me so pardon the lack of set-up pics or progress pics.

One last thing is at my mom and dad’s house also in the Northeastern United States but at a difficult distance from my apartment and the city there is a woodworking set up. There is potential for many Kosmo cases to be built. I have planned my Kosmo to grow endlessly and not fit in the living room anymore.

-Fumu / Esopus

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I’m really lucky that I have two bedrooms in my rented house, I can do soldering at my desk in the spare room/office if it’s too cold at my workshop. I can only afford it because I’ve been here since before covid/WFH pushed rent on 2 bedroom places up. My workshop costs about the same as a room in an apartment, but it’s much bigger and more useful! There is a couple of downsides; the roof used to leak until the landlord fixed it and I’m technically not meant to be there between 10pm and 7am. I’m going to set the back of it up as a recording and performance space now that I only have one car in there. I’ve got my eye on a 4k camcorder so I can run a YouTube channel on everything I do there, it’ll feel less lonely if I can share with people!

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thats the way I get more out of the space is benches with shelves on them that i have built from reclaimed wood and I put wheels on everything makes rearranging and cleaning much easier .
Ive been lucky to live in houses an apartment would drive me crazy I am to much of a hoarder. working in the building trades I can salvage stuff all the time , it kills me the stuff that just gets trashed / wasted all the time .

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My kozmo and working area is the same. A 11x13 foot room in my apartment thats my “office”. I have three desks un a “U” shape that i pivot from in an office chair. ITs not large, but vertical shelving makes its somewhat useable at least.

Most of my desks are just cheap desks i bought at walmart back in 2008, so an upgrade at some point is due.

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I have a workshop that’s a garage/barn a 10 minute bus ride away with all my tools, woodworking stuff, miscellaneous items of ironmongery, shop equipment, paint, bikes, and everything else I own that is too bulky/dirty to fit in my 2 bedroom house.

Adjoining that I had an old shipping container insulated and converted into an office/studio space where the there’s the synth, PC, 3d printer, server rack, electronics bench, and a camp bed (for long 3d prints).

Hence I spend an extortionate amount of money on bus tickets in the winter (in summer I can cycle).

It’s not ideal but it’s cheap and means I have a dedicated space to go and work on projects.

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Upcycled old futon frame for more workspace today. Maybe I’ll post a pic of the rest of the room when I clean :rofl:

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its probably a really bad idea but i just do everything in my bedroom

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And you are doing rock climbing? :upside_down_face:
Nice upcycling!!

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