pasco (Phrase Auditory Scanning COmmunicator)

pasco is a development project by the Ace Centre to create a AAC app to support people who require auditory scanning only. This may be with one or several Text to Speech (TTS) languages or recorded speech. The app supports auditory cues in a headphone and main speech out of the main speaker of a device. Currently only these features are supported in iOS - other platforms are due to be supported in the future.

Getting Started

You can try out a limited version of pasco on the web at app.pasco.chat. Alternatively download the iOS app here.

To learn more about pasco, Read pasco documentation.

Differences between versions

Feature	iOS	Web
Cue / Main voice splitting between headphone and speaker	✅	❎
Import/Export of Vocab tree	✅	✅
Offline support	✅	✅
In-App Editing	✅	✅
In-App Voice Recording	✅	❎
Adjustable font size and Colour Themes	✅	✅
Switch Access (1-4)	✅	✅
On-Screen navigation tool, Resizable and Draggable	✅	✅
Webhook support (e.g. IFTT, Zapier)	✅	✅
(Beta) Scroll-wheel navigation mode	✅	✅
Offline voices	✅	❎

Developing

Prerequisites

• Node

If developing the iOS build you will also need:

• A mac
• XCode

How to install?

npm install

To test the web build:

npm run dev

Start Web Development Server

gulp dev

Web Production Build

gulp build-prod

Cordova Builds

Initially create a cordova build from cordova-template.

## You may also want to clean the previous build folder
# gulp clean-cordova-build
gulp init-cordova-build
cd ./builds/cordova-main-build/
npm install
cordova platform add ios
## For ios9 build
# gulp clean-cordova-build --build-name ios9-build
# gulp init-cordova-build --build-name ios9-build

Build for development with live-reload.

gulp dist-to-cordova-build-dev-watch
## for iOS 9
# gulp dist-to-cordova-build-dev-watch --build-name ios9-build --target es5
## then open another terminal for cordova build
cd ./builds/cordova-<build-name>/
cordova run --live-reload

Build for production

gulp dist-to-cordova-build-prod
cd ./builds/cordova-<build-name>/
cordova build ios --release

Having problems building?

Try this:

npm install --upgrade cordova@latest
npm install --upgrade cordova-ios@latest
npm install --upgrade ios-deploy
npm install cordova-icon

Notes

• configuration file is at html/config.json. modes are auto and switch.
• the app detects a number of keystrokes. To get it to work with 1 or more switches the app needs a switch box that sends these keystrokes:

ArrowUp or W -> Previous # on switch mode
ArrowDown or S -> Next # on switch mode
ArrowRight or D -> Go into or select
ArrowLeft or A -> Go out

Roadmap

Our next milestone is: https://github.com/AceCentre/pasco/milestone/4

Built With

• FontAwesome - For some of the icons
• Responsive Voice - The web framework used for TTS on the web

Contributing

We would 💛 your contributions. Please feel free to fork the project and we would to see your Pull Requests. Take a look at the issue queue if you want something to get started on. If GitHub isn't your thing and you want to give us feedback - drop us a line

Authors

• Will Wade - Initial work, and Project Lead - WillWade - GitHub
• Hossein Amin - Most of the hard programming work - HoseeinAmin - GitHub
• Selma Al Zarrouk - Adding tests + Fixing bugs
• Gavin Henderson - A little bit of coding

Releasing to App Store Gotchas

Signing for "pasco" requires a development team. Select a development team in the Signing & Capabilities editor.

This is pretty straight forward. Go into the signing and capabilities tab and select Ace Centre North as the team. Make sure you do it for Debug and Release.

The app icon is the cordova icon

Run cordova-icon --icon=model/icon.png from the cordova folder

The build and version numbers are weird

You have to manually bump the version numbers

Archive is greyed out under product

You have to select 'Any iOS Device' as your build target

pasco has conflicting provisioning settings. pasco is automatically signed for development, but a conflicting code signing identity iPhone Distribution has been manually specified. Set the code signing identity value to "Apple Development" in the build settings editor, or switch to manual signing in the Signing & Capabilities editor.

Try untick and retick 'automatically manage signing'

License

This project is licensed under the GNU GPL v3 - see the LICENSE.txt file for details

Acknowledgments

• A massive thanks to our Clients who have inspired the need for this
• Paul Pickford who has helped fund the project through his eBay Sales
• Francis, Alli and Students at Lancasterian School who have helped test the project and give really useful feedback