How to check programatically if keyboard is connected or not?

Question

I am developing an application with C# winforms.

Our application is going to be installed on win8 surface(touch screen device).

We want to check if a keyboard is connected via USB then our app will not show soft keypad otherwise it will show.

Many methods are avaliable to check for WinRT but none for winforms C#.

Please let me know if my question is not clear.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

I just wrote this and tested on W8:

ManagementObjectSearcher searcher = new ManagementObjectSearcher("Select Name from Win32_Keyboard");

        foreach(ManagementObject keyboard in searcher.Get())
        {
            if (!keyboard.GetPropertyValue("Name").Equals(""))
            {
                Console.WriteLine("KB Name: {0}", keyboard.GetPropertyValue("Name"));
            }
        }

I also connected a second keyboard and can see it detected. When I unplug one I get one entry, when unplug both I get nothing.

I also found some examples here: Example 1 and here Example 2

Hope this helps.