Toggle Lenovo battery conservation mode from Linux Mint Power Manager

[silviuchingaru]

Hello,

I was trying to implement the Lenovo battery conservation mode from Power Manager but I have no experience with Linux Mint programming so I end up with the following script that I can enable and disable Lenovo battery conservation mode by running a command like conservation_mode enable|disable.

The script is placed in /usr/local/bin/conservation_mode and has the following content:

#!/bin/bash

# Define color codes
GREEN='\033[0;32m'
RED='\033[0;31m'
NC='\033[0m' # No Color

# Function to display help
function show_help {
    script_name=$(basename "$0")
    echo "Usage: $script_name {on|enable|off|disable|toggle|--help}"
    echo ""
    echo "Commands:"
    echo "  on, enable       Enable Conservation Mode"
    echo "  off, disable     Disable Conservation Mode"
    echo "  toggle           Toggle Conservation Mode"
    echo "  --help           Display this help message"
}

# Function to enable conservation mode
function enable_conservation_mode {
    if [ "$status" == "1" ]; then
        echo -e "Conservation Mode is already ${GREEN}ON${NC}"
    else
        echo "1" | sudo tee /sys/bus/platform/devices/VPC2004:*/conservation_mode
        echo -e "Conservation Mode turned ${GREEN}ON${NC}"
    fi
}

# Function to disable conservation mode
function disable_conservation_mode {
    if [ "$status" == "0" ]; then
        echo -e "Conservation Mode is already ${RED}OFF${NC}"
    else
        echo "0" | sudo tee /sys/bus/platform/devices/VPC2004:*/conservation_mode
        echo -e "Conservation Mode turned ${RED}OFF${NC}"
    fi
}

# Check the conservation mode status
status=$(cat /sys/bus/platform/devices/VPC2004:*/conservation_mode)

if [ "$status" == "1" ]; then
    echo -e "Conservation Mode is ${GREEN}ON${NC}"
else
    echo -e "Conservation Mode is ${RED}OFF${NC}"
fi

# Print a blank line before usage information
echo ""

# Check if an argument is passed
if [ -z "$1" ]; then
    show_help
    exit 1
fi

# Handle the passed argument
case "$1" in
    on|enable)
        enable_conservation_mode
        ;;
    off|disable)
        disable_conservation_mode
        ;;
    toggle)
        if [ "$status" == "1" ]; then
            disable_conservation_mode
        else
            enable_conservation_mode
        fi
        ;;
    --help)
        show_help
        ;;
    *)
        echo "Invalid option: $1"
        show_help
        exit 1
        ;;
esac

I tried to implement it to Power Manager GUI like this:

But I don't have experience with Linux Mint / GTK prgramming and I did not figgured out how to implement it also from GUI.

As far as I discovered, in /usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/org.cinnamon.settings-daemon.plugins.power.gschema.xml needs to be added something like:

<key name="battery-conservation-mode" type="b">
    <default>false</default>
    <summary>Enable or disable conservation mode</summary>
    <description>Enables the conservation mode on supported devices.</description>
</key>

after edit, we need to recompile using sudo glib-compile-schemas /usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/ and then change /usr/share/cinnamon/cinnamon-settings/modules/cs_power.py in

primary_settings.add_row(self.set_device_battery_primary(device))
# Add something like:
primary_settings.add_row(GSettingsSwitch(_("Conservation mode"), CSD_SCHEMA, "battery-conservation-mode"))

but I did not figure it out how to add a listener and where to add it for "battery-conservation-mode" setting "on change" to actualy enable or disabling the conservation mode using something like:

    def on_conservation_mode_toggled(self, settings, key):
        # Get the current value of the toggle
        conservation_mode_enabled = settings.get_boolean("battery-conservation-mode"))

        # Perform the required action, e.g., writing to sysfs
        if conservation_mode_enabled:
            self.enable_conservation_mode()
        else:
            self.disable_conservation_mode()

    def enable_conservation_mode(self):
        # Example: Write '1' to the conservation mode sysfs file
        try:
            with open("/sys/bus/platform/devices/VPC2004:*/conservation_mode", "w") as f:
                f.write("1")
        except IOError as e:
            print(f"Failed to enable conservation mode: {e}")

    def disable_conservation_mode(self):
        # Example: Write '0' to the conservation mode sysfs file
        try:
            with open("/sys/bus/platform/devices/VPC2004:*/conservation_mode", "w") as f:
                f.write("0")
        except IOError as e:
            print(f"Failed to disable conservation mode: {e}")

I think this is a must have, at least for Lenovo laptops, because this setting is indeed protecting your battery and I have laptops of 6-8 years old and their batteries are still keeping current.

I'm willing to contribute but a little help would be appreciated.

Thank you!