Connecting multiple keyboards in iOS 14 Objective-C - objective-c

Question

iOS 14 introduced GCKeyboard. I was able to successfully connect a BlueTooth NumberPad in my app but I need to be able to connect two of them in tandem. Could anyone please point me to sample code?
In the GCController class there is a "controllers" method which returns an array of all connected controllers, but there isn't anything similar for GCKeyboard.
Here is my code:
- (void)viewDidLoad {
[super viewDidLoad];
[[UIApplication sharedApplication]setIdleTimerDisabled:YES];
// notifications for keyboard (dis)connect
[[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter]addObserver:self selector:#selector(keyboardWasConnected:) name:GCKeyboardDidConnectNotification object:nil];
[[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter]addObserver:self selector:#selector(keyboardWasDisconnected:) name:GCKeyboardDidDisconnectNotification object:nil];
}
GCKeyboard *leftKeyboard;
GCKeyboard *rightKeyboard;
- (void)keyboardWasConnected:(NSNotification *)notification {
if (!self.leftKeyboard) {
leftKeyboard = (GCKeyboard *)notification.object;
NSLog(#"Left Keyboard connected: %#\n", leftKeyboard.description);
NSString *keyboardStatus = [NSString stringWithFormat:#"Left Keyboard CONNECTED:\n%#", leftKeyboard.description];
self.statusLabel.text = keyboardStatus;
self.leftKeyboard = leftKeyboard;
[self reactToKeyboardInput];
}
else if (!self.rightKeyboard) {
NSLog(#"Right Keyboard connected: %#\n", rightKeyboard.description);
rightKeyboard = (GCKeyboard *)notification.object;
NSString *keyboardStatus = [NSString stringWithFormat:#"Right Keyboard CONNECTED:\n%#", rightKeyboard.description];
self.statusLabel.text = keyboardStatus;
self.rightKeyboard = rightKeyboard;
[self reactToKeyboardInput];
}
}
- (void)keyboardWasDisconnected:(NSNotification *)notification {
if (self.leftKeyboard) {
GCKeyboard *keyboard = (GCKeyboard *)notification.object;
NSString *status = [NSString stringWithFormat:#"Left Keyboard DISCONNECTED:\n%#", keyboard.description];
self.statusLabel.text = status;
self.leftKeyboard = nil;
}
else if (self.rightKeyboard) {
GCKeyboard *keyboard = (GCKeyboard *)notification.object;
NSString *status = [NSString stringWithFormat:#"Right Keyboard DISCONNECTED:\n%#", keyboard.description];
self.statusLabel.text = status;
self.rightKeyboard = nil;
}
}
When a keyboard or number pad is connected I get the message:
2020-09-18 13:09:15.845943-0700 Controller[1653:351628] Left Keyboard connected: GCController 0x280bb8dd0 ('Keyboard' - 0x27c3dc28cec4d818)

Answer 1

"Bring keyboard and mouse gaming to iPad" WWDC video transcript states:
In the case of keyboards, you can't differentiate multiple keyboards, and all keyboard events from multiple keyboards are instead coalesced for you. So while you might use notifications to notice when a keyboard disconnects and perhaps pause the game to prompt for different input, in general, you'll find that just using GCKeyboard-Device.coalesced to check on the key state when non-nil is the right path.
So while you may have multiple keyboards connected, it sounds like they all get coalesced into a single GCKeyboard instance and you can't differentiate between them. That is why there's no +[GCKeyboard keyboards] method. Instead there is +[GCKeyboard coalescedKeyboard]