Cinesense Automatically Turns on Your Bose CineMate Speakers When You Play Music

A good stereo system is an absolute necessity if you care about your music or cinema experience. Unfortunately, home theater system manufacturers haven’t always done the best job of integrating their products with the rest of your entertainment setup. A lot of people end up leaving their home theater systems turned on at all times, because it’s a pain to switch it on every time you watch TV or listen to music. If, however, you have Bose CineMate speakers, you can build Cinesense to automatically turn them on whenever audio is played.

There have been a couple versions of the Bose CineMate home theater speaker system, though they’re all discontinued now. But they were quite popular, so there is a good chance you have a set. If you use the optical connection between the CineMate interface module and the powered subwoofer — and you definitely should if you care about sound quality — then you can take advantage of the DIY Cinesense device. Cinesense will continuously monitor the optical signal to determine if audio is being played. If it is, then Cinesense will turn the Bose CineMate system on. If it isn’t, then the system will be turned off. Importantly, Cinesense will not turn off the system if you simply have your music paused, as the optical connection will still be active.

Cinesense’s creator, Jay Tavares, doesn’t currently have plans to sell the device, so you’ll have to make it yourself. All of the files and information you need to do that has been provided on the Cinesense GitHub page. You’ll need to have the custom PCB fabricated, as it needs to fit inside of a standard housing and that would be quite difficult with a perf board. You’ll need that housing, a male and a female DB9 connector, a Microchip ATtiny85 microcontroller, a couple of resistors, and a capacitor. After it has been built, the Cinesense device will sit in line between the subwoofer and the cable to the interface module. It gets power from that connection, so no additional power supply is necessary. Tavares says this has only been tested on the Bose CineMate GS Series II speakers, but that it should work with other models.