# The BRX, unlocked.

Open source software that turns stock Battle Company BRX taggers into a hosted game system. A laptop writes the match. A phone rides each tagger. No subscription, no venue Wi-Fi during play, and the taggers stay exactly as they shipped.

- [Get the app](/download/)
- [Read the BRX manual](/manual/)

![A BRX tagger with a phone mounted on the rail, the HUD live, headset beside it](/photos/hero.jpg)

```data
counts
```

## What is this?

### A BRX is a laser tag gun. Open BRX is the software that runs the game.

The Battle Company BRX is a rifle-shaped laser tag gun with a wireless sensor headset, sold by [Battle Company](https://battlecompany.com/) and built like it walked out of Halo: infrared shots, real hit sensing, a scope you sight in yourself, a speaker full of sounds. Battle Company built it as a serious system for home players, not a toy. Out of the box it plays a handful of built-in games from its own menu. Open BRX is free, open-source software that takes over the game: a laptop keeps score and sets the rules, a phone on each tagger shows the player what is happening, and the taggers themselves stay exactly as they shipped.

## Mission Control

### Write the game. Muster the taggers. Start. Recap.

Mission Control runs on the laptop. It sees every tagger's headset, battery and link before anyone walks out, holds your favourite games, arms the phones and counts down the start. Then it steps back. Each phone runs its own tagger, so the laptop can be out of range and the match keeps going.

![Mission Control readiness board: eight taggers with headset, battery and link state for each](/shots/mc-armory.jpg)

- **Readiness board.** A headset that is off, a battery that is low or a phone that is missing shows up before the match, not during it.
- **Pick or write the game.** Start from a stock mode. Set the rules and who carries what. Save it under a name. MVP games run outdoors only; indoor play is a post-launch feature.
- **The match, added up.** Scores, kills and the winner, collected from every phone as it comes back into range. Export the sheet.

![Pick the game: one choice per row, and your favourites](/shots/mc-games.jpg) ![Kit: assign taggers, teams and loadout policy](/shots/mc-kit.jpg)

## The HUD

### Your phone, on the tagger.

The BRX Companion holds the Bluetooth link to one tagger and shows what the tagger cannot: health and armor, ammo and reserve, the clock, the weapon in hand, who is on the net. It picks the loadout, calls the hits, and tells you when you redeploy.

![Live HUD: health, rounds, the match clock, weapons hot](/shots/hud-live.jpg)

![Loadout picker: browse the arsenal and try a weapon on the real tagger](/shots/hud-loadout.jpg) ![Down screen: who got you and the redeploy count](/shots/hud-down.jpg)

- **Loadout.** Primary, secondary and a perk. Browse the arsenal, read the numbers, and fire a try-out on the real tagger before you commit.
- **Down.** Who got you and how long until you redeploy. The headset goes dark and the tagger stays silent until the count ends.

## Game modes

### Every rule yours.

Play the defaults or change the cap, the clock, respawn, health, armor and what each slot may carry. Save it. Modes are Python, and new ones are welcome.

```data
modes
```

## Arsenal

### The whole arsenal. Three slots.

Every player carries a primary, a secondary and a perk. Sixteen weapons are in the game, in six classes. Twelve of them can take the primary slot and fourteen can take the secondary, because a weapon that cannot kill makes a fine backup and a poor primary. Two more, the rocket launcher and the rail gun, are pickups: you take one from a station during the match. Each weapon is written to the tagger as its own data, not firmware: fire mode, rate of fire, damage, magazine, reload and swap delay. That is why a shotgun, a bolt rifle and a charge rifle feel like different weapons on the same tagger.

Five perks fill the third slot, and every one costs something. Body Armor gives you more armour, but it slows your reload. Armour Piercing sends your primary straight through armour and shields, but it hits for less. No perk is a free upgrade.

- [See every weapon](/arsenal)

```data
roles
```

```data
huddemo
```

## brx-mcp

### Talk to your tagger.

brx-mcp is the instrument underneath everything. A Python command line and an MCP server that drive a BRX over Bluetooth from Windows, macOS or Linux. Scan, identify, listen. Read firmware, battery and health. Write custom weapons. Load sound packs over USB. Capture and replay the IR word with the ESP32 rig.

```
# find every tagger in range, then read one
$ python -m brx_mcp scan
Tactix-XXXX   FE:AD:FD:XX:XX:XX   -58 dBm
Tactix-XXXX   FE:AD:FD:XX:XX:XX   -71 dBm
$ python -m brx_mcp diagnose FE:AD:FD:XX:XX:XX
firmware v4.32 · battery 7.9 V · ping answered

# or let an agent drive the bench over MCP
> scan for taggers and read every battery
tools: scan · connect · send · wait_for · diagnostics · panic
```

brx-mcp also speaks MCP, the protocol AI agents use to call tools. So an agent can run the bench with you: find the taggers, read the batteries, fire a test shot and read what came back.

## Objectives

### A control point: presence, or a grenade you shoot.

![A BRX smart grenade in hill mode, lit](/photos/grenade.jpg)

The King of the Hill point defaults to presence: a spare phone or an M5StickS3 sitting on the objective, reading who is nearby over Bluetooth. Set a BRX smart grenade to hill mode instead and it also works as a king-of-the-hill objective, shot rather than stood on: the taggers already see its beacon, so possession is read off the player's own tagger, with no base, no extra hardware and no firmware change. The same presence idea gives you respawn points: a spare phone works as one today.

## The kit

### A tagger, a headset, a phone and a mount.

Everything a player carries. The tagger and headset are stock Battle Company BRX. The phone is any Android or iPhone with Bluetooth, running the BRX Companion. The mount is an ordinary rail phone clamp. The taggers stay exactly as they shipped.

![The kit laid out: BRX tagger, headset, phone with the HUD, and the rail mount](/photos/kit.jpg)

## The BRX manual

### Everything known about the BRX. One place.

Hardware, operation, gameplay, sound, repairs and the full developer protocol, gathered from Battle Company's documents, the community and the bench, and written once. Searchable, including by command.

```data
manual
```

- [Open the manual](/manual/)

## Open source

### Open source. Stock firmware. Yours to run.

- **MIT licensed.** Run it yourself, change it, ship your own modes and sound packs.
- **Nothing flashed.** Everything goes over the tagger's Bluetooth serial protocol. Your taggers still work with everything else.
- **Field ready.** Start on a laptop hotspot. Players walk out of range and the game keeps running on the phones.
- **Credit.** Protocol discovery: LaserTagMods (JEDGE / JBOX). Open BRX is independent and not endorsed by Battle Company.

## Get it

### Two downloads and a repository.

```data
release
```