Getting started

What you need

• Your phone, and something to rest it on that will not move: a tripod, a shelf, a stack of books.
• A printed target from the free target pack. Print it at 100% / Actual size, never “Fit to page”. Every sheet has a ruler bar that should measure 100 mm. If it is shorter, the target is smaller than the drills assume.
• A red, green or infrared (IR) training laser. It is not included with the app.

The short version

1. Tape the target flat and prop the phone 6 to 15 feet away with the whole sheet in the picture.
2. On the Setup screen, pick your Laser color and your Target.
3. Press Calibrate target, let the app find the sheet, and press Looks good.
4. Press Learn laser, fire 3 to 5 shots at the target, then Done learning.
5. Start shooting. On Android that is Open camera & start.

Every step you finish on the Setup screen turns green and gets a tick (Calibrate target ✓). The rest of this page explains each step and the options inside it.

1 · Place the phone and the target

Set the phone down where it is going to stay, then frame the target. Calibration records where the sheet sits in the picture. If the phone or the target moves afterwards, even a little, hits get scored against the wrong spot.

• Distance. About 6 to 15 feet from the phone to the target. You can stand as far back as you like. Only the phone's distance matters.
• Framing. The sheet's whole black border has to be in the picture, with a little space around it. A border that touches the edge of the picture cannot be calibrated accurately.
• Light. Light the target, not the room. Sunlight on the sheet or a very bright room can wash out the laser flash.
• Keep screens out of the picture. A TV, a monitor or a shiny reflection can register as shots.

2 · The Setup screen

3 · Calibrate

Calibrating tells the app where the sheet is in the camera picture, so that a flash at one spot in the picture becomes a hit in a particular zone on the target. Nothing scores until a target is calibrated. It takes a few seconds, and there are three ways to do it: let the app find one sheet, let it find every sheet, or tap the corners yourself.

Before you start: zoom and brightness

Set the zoom and brightness first, then calibrate. Changing the zoom afterwards changes where everything sits in the picture, so the calibration no longer fits. Android clears it for you and the tick goes away; on either phone, calibrate again after any zoom change.

• Android The calibrate screen has a zoom slider on the left edge. ▾ Adjust — zoom & brightness opens the full panel (see Camera adjust). The panel closes by itself when you tap the first corner.
• iPhone Pinch the picture to zoom, or use Adjust on the camera screen.

Auto-detect: let the app find the sheet

Android 🎯 Auto-detect
iPhone Calibrate

Every Shoot House sheet has a thick black border printed around it. Auto-detect finds that border and works out the rest of the sheet from it. It draws a box on the picture for you to check:

• ✓ Looks good if the box sits on the sheet. That saves the calibration. On Android it also takes you back to Setup.
• ↻ Retry if the box is off. Hold the phone still and try again.
• ✕ Cancel to stop without calibrating.

If it cannot find the border, it says why: the sheet is cut off by the edge of the picture (zoom out or step the phone back), or no border was found (frame the whole sheet and hold steady). Either way, tapping the corners always works.

Tap the 4 corners: do it by hand

Android tap the corners on the calibrate screen
iPhone Tap 4

The manual way, for when Auto-detect will not find the border: a bad angle, poor light, or a sheet that is not from the pack. Tap the four corners of the target on the picture in this order:

1. Top left
2. Top right
3. Bottom right
4. Bottom left

The banner counts them (0/4 to 4/4), and the fourth tap finishes the calibration.

• Tap the corners of the paper, not the corners of the black border printed on it. The app measures the sheet from its outer edge.
• The order matters. Tapping out of order flips or twists the scoring map, and hits score in the wrong zones without any warning.
• Take your time. A corner tapped a little off shifts every hit on the target.
• ✕ Start over clears the corners you have tapped so far. iPhone Cancel leaves tap mode.

Detect all: several targets on one phone

One phone can watch up to 8 sheets at once, for a row of targets or a drill like El Presidente.

• Android Tick Multiple targets on one camera on Setup (drills that need several targets do this for you), press Set up targets, then 🎯 Detect all.
• iPhone Press Detect all on the camera screen, then Looks good. The button is hidden in modes that are scored on one sheet.

It boxes every sheet it can see and numbers them left to right, in the order you will shoot them. Those numbers are the drill's Target 1, Target 2 and so on, so post the sheets in the order the drill expects. Every box starts as the sheet picked on Setup, or as the drill's own sheets in a drill.

• Tap a box to select it. Then you can change which sheet it is (the name with ▾), Remove it, or press Done to leave it as it is.
• Android Tap a sheet that has no box to add it on its own. Tap inside its black border.
• Android Clear removes every box, and ✓ Finish saves the layout. Setup then shows Set up targets (3) ✓ with the count.

If a sheet runs off the edge of the picture, Detect all still boxes it but warns that the box will be skewed. Zoom out or step the phone back and run Detect all again.

Two shooters: Showdown and the duels

• Android Cal P1 (left) and Cal P2 (right) calibrate one sheet each. Auto-detect only looks in that half of the picture, so put player 1's sheet on the left.
• iPhone Put both sheets up and use Detect all. Start stays off until both are calibrated.
• Dueling Tree is one shared sheet, so there is one calibration (Calibrate the tree on Android).

Drills and scenarios

A drill knows how many targets it needs, and Start stays off until exactly that many are calibrated: not fewer, not more. The drill's own setup page tells you which sheets to print and how many. If Start will not light up, read the line under it (for example Calibrate exactly 3 targets — found 2).

Photo targets

A custom photo target has no corners to tap. Taking the snapshot and tracing it is the calibration. The same rule applies: if the phone moves, set it up again.

When to calibrate again

• Every session. The app does not keep a calibration after it has been fully closed, because phones get moved between sessions.
• The phone or the target has moved, even slightly.
• You changed the zoom.
• You turned the phone between portrait and landscape. Calibrate it the way up you will shoot.
• Hits plot in the wrong place, or in the wrong zone.

Android Starting a new calibration clears the old one right away, so finish it once you have started.

4 · Learn laser

Learn laser teaches the app the exact color of your laser. Afterwards it ignores flashes of other colors, such as a lamp, a reflection or a screen. It is the fix for stray light scoring as hits. It is recommended, not required: the app still sees red and green lasers without it.

1. Aim the camera at the target. Calibrating first is the easy way to do that.
2. Press Learn laser on Setup.
3. Fire 3 to 5 shots at the target.
4. Press ✓ Done learning. Setup shows Learn laser ✓.

• It needs at least two shots to see the color. With fewer, nothing is learned and the tick does not appear.
• Each laser color keeps its own result. Switch to green and back to red and the red one is still there. Run it again if you change to a different laser.
• Android keeps what it learned after the app is closed. iPhone Learn again at the start of each session.
• Skip it for 🔴+🟢. One learned color cannot describe two lasers, so in that mode the step never gets a tick. That is expected.

Check IR camera (IR lasers only)

An infrared laser is invisible to the eye, and not every phone camera can see it: many filter infrared out before it reaches the sensor. With ⚫ IR picked, Check IR camera replaces Learn laser and tells you whether your phone can see the laser at all.

1. Open Adjust and get the target looking right. Keep ISO low (around 100) and use the brightness slider to make the picture bright.
2. Rest the phone on something solid and press ▶ Start check.
3. Hold still and do not fire while it reads the room for a couple of seconds.
4. When it says Now fire at the target — five shots, fire five.

5 · Camera adjust

Android ▾ Adjust — zoom & brightness while calibrating, ▾ Camera adjust on the shooting screen
iPhone Adjust on the camera screen (More settings opens the rest)

These are tuned by looking at the picture, so they sit on the camera screen. Most people set them once and leave them.

Android With a photo target the zoom is locked to the snapshot (🔒 Zoom locked), because changing it would move the picture off the photo.

6 · Shoot House rooms (the hub)

With the hub on a laptop, each phone watches one room. Calibration still happens on each phone, in its room. The hub cannot do it for you.

• On each phone: enter its Room name, scan the hub's QR code, and connect, then calibrate every target in that room. Use Detect all if the room has more than one.
• Calibrate each target to the sheet that is actually on the wall. The hub scores by sheet name, so a hostage or no-shoot sheet has to be calibrated as that sheet.
• The hub's LASER — EVERY PHONE switch changes the laser on every connected phone at once.
• Before a run, the hub compares what each phone reports with what the drill expects, and flags a room name that matches nothing or a sheet that is different. See the drill builder guide.
• A phone you carry as the comms handset does not watch a target, so it needs no calibration.

Every calibration control at a glance

Messages you might see