Flintstep

Use your Spark Control X as a MIDI foot controller.

Flintstep is a free menu-bar app for macOS. It connects to the pedal over Bluetooth and shows up in Logic, Ableton, MainStage or any other MIDI app as a device called Flintstep (Spark Control X).

Press II and your DAW gets CC 81 = 127. Let go and it gets 0.

What it does

Flintstep's editor. A drawing of the pedal shows each switch's message, CC 80 to CC 85, two expression pedals send CC 11 and CC 7, and a panel on the right sets switch I to CC 80, momentary, with an amber LED. Flintstep's editor. A drawing of the pedal shows each switch's message, CC 80 to CC 85, two expression pedals send CC 11 and CC 7, and a panel on the right sets switch I to CC 80, momentary, with an amber LED.
The editor. Click a switch on the drawing to choose what it sends.

How it works

  1. Turn the pedal on

    Keep the Spark app closed. The pedal talks to one app at a time.

  2. Open Flintstep

    It finds the pedal and connects. macOS asks for Bluetooth access the first time. After that Flintstep stays in the menu bar.

  3. Map it in your DAW

    Pick Flintstep (Spark Control X) as a MIDI input and use MIDI learn, or change the messages in Flintstep to match what your DAW expects.

Download

macOS 12+ · Apple Silicon and Intel

You need a Spark Control X. Expression pedals are optional and need TRS cables.

Flintstep isn't notarized yet, so macOS blocks the first launch: click Open Anyway in System Settings › Privacy & Security, or on macOS 14 and earlier right-click the app and choose Open.

Open source

Flintstep is free and MIT licensed. The code, issues and releases are on GitHub. The protocol work started from Paul Hamshere's Spark-Control-X notes.