Disable Touchpad for power saving

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1

Hi

I have used powertop to determine what consumes most enegry and have the following results

 Power est.              Usage       Events/s    Category       Description
  25.7 W    100.0%                      Device         USB device: Hydra Force Sensor (Peratech Holdco Limited)
  9.62 W    100.0%                      Device         USB device: Wireless_Device (MediaTek Inc.)
  551 mW    100.0%                      Device         Radio device: btusb
  406 mW     54.1%                      Device         Display backlight
  336 mW      3.7 ms/s     747.6        Timer          tick_nohz_highres_handler
  173 mW    100.0%                      Device         Radio device: ideapad_acpi

I tried to disable touchpad via keyboard (Fn+F10 in my case) and via Fedora UI Settings but the output of powertop didn’t change.

Is there a way to enable / disable touchpad to reduce energy consumption?
I have Lenovo Legion 7 laptop.

Thank you in advance.

2

Since this is hardware specific question, as alternative I decided try to disable USB device when in PowerSafe mode and laptop is unplugged .

I want to change question to the following.
I have listed USB devices - lsusb:

...
Bus 005 Device 002: ID 17ef:6131 Lenovo Hydra Force Sensor
...

grep 6131 /sys/bus/usb/devices/*/idProduct

gives me

/sys/bus/usb/devices/5-1/idProduct:6131

How can I disable it manually, and then enable it when needed? I will use bluetooth mouse when touchpad is disabled

I have found that I can use usbguard or try overwrite the config.

What is safe way to disable/enable USB device?

I wanted to ask this question before I do something dumb :slight_smile:
Thank you in advance

3

You can blacklist USB devices by device ID, see how to disable USB devices based on vendor id in Linux environment? - Unix & Linux Stack Exchange

I imagine it is safe, but it is not convenient. Great idea for a little application or settings toggle.

I wonder if blacklisting will cut power to the device though?

I have tried running powertopand cannot see the devices as you have shown them? My total system ‘battery discharge’ is around 3W. 25.7W seems crazy high!!

2 Likes
4

That is usually done in the firmware?

Or open the laptop up and unplug the ribbon cable to the touchpad

5

That’s sound like a bit of an overkill :slight_smile:

6

I mean if you dont need it? I use my touchpad all the time.

7

If my touchpad was using 25.7W I’d be disconnecting it :wink: