#asterics grid

[twiith3menace]

Update on AsTeRICS!

tl;dr: it's customisation heaven. if you value being able to customise absolutely everything, read up on the manual and get to work. More below the cut.

It passed the bar, and I'm making a 5x12 board from scratch to use with it. Since that will take ages, I'll continue using WeaveChat. WeaveChat still works fine, but AsTeRICS has the potential to be even better once fully set up.

For my basic needs, it's good! It's 100% free, cross-platform, good offline availability and is multilingual-friendly. It goes above and beyond with the customisation options, super quick sync, and being open source with file backups in obf/obz (open board format).

The customisation on this app is a DREAM (no caps: dream). Aside from the basic color, image, label, and pronunciation editing: you can resize your grid freely, and your buttons don't have to only take up one square (some of my buttons are 2x1, for example); it has "word forms" that allow for inflection and conjugation... And the real best part:

Everything you see when using the communicator is a button/element you can customise.

The home button? customiseable. The erase button? customiseable. The sentence bar? customiseable. You can move these around, resize, do so much! And there are also a lot more things you can put in as well (even a youtube player). I changed my sentence bar a bit, and added language change buttons + share as image or text buttons to my board.

The premade sets came a bit buggy, but it's an easy fix if you can read the manual.

Superb software, no clue how I missed it for so long!

[occasionalmeowing]

oh yes! i started working on my asterics guide yesterday. making these guides will certainly take a while because i like to be really detailed, but (hopefully) really clear at the same time. and that takes so much talking spoons...

anyways, i'll be starting on terminology because the language asterics uses confused me when i first started, and i think it's good to establish that before starting. if anyone has sources to aac terminology, particularly when it comes to an aac app like "button" and "boardset", those would be greatly appreciated! any source is okay.

oh yeah, i'll also be attempting to make a masterpost of these guides, and maybe make then into documents if anyone's interested, as that's where i'm writing them right now

unfortunately i have no idea when i'll be done with anything, but i'll try to work on it when i can and make any updates here if needed

[mave-uses-aac]

[talkorsomething]

I found an "spb -> obf (& obf -> spb)" converter!

So basically if u can figure out how 2 use it, it should convert td snap board format to open board format, & open boards to td snap boards also.

Not 100% sure what results look like, but assuming you *can* download from pageset central w/o an account ... could then use td snap boards in asterics?!

[anautistic]

This is my Asterics Grid board!

Was annoyed at a few things with WeaveChat for my small AAC, so I've been favoring SpeechAssistent, but typing can be hard for me to do all the time. (Especially when mobile phone keyboards are so small!)

So in looking for a solution I discovered Asterics can be installed and used offline like an app. I imported Vocal Flair 40 and have been making some edits so it's more usable to me.

I really like it! So excited to have better symbol support when I can't have my larger device.

[occasionalmeowing]

would anyone be interested in a guide on how to use asterics aac? it used to be called asterics grid. i think it's a wonderful website/web app, but can be really hard to understand... especially because the documentation and other videos made weren't very helpful to me. i'm not sure what format i would be able to feasably make it in, but i could try text posts, and maybe videos? i'm no editing expert though.

[occasionalmeowing]

i love asterics dearly, but it can get pretty tiring having to add every word form seperately... i have a couple templates saved so i don't have to type everything down each time, but it's still a lot of work. sometimes i have enough energy to fill in one or more folders for a letter if i'm doing verbs, but other times i only have enough energy for doing words in the sentence i'm saying

[sugergliderjr]

I am working on my animal folders!

(struggling to organise my mammals folder)

(advice/recommendations welcome)