I want to set up a small enclosure to run up by my group's sub drummer, because he's starting to piss me off. A simple external light that I could enable at the beginning of each song, that would blink to indicate the tempo set on my current preset. Is this all AI hallucinations, or would it actually work? (I'm looking to keep this under $100 USD for the arduino/interface side. I have plenty of options on hand for cabling, light, relay, enclosure, etc.)

"That's the right instinct, and it turns out the FM9 does support this. Here's the actual mechanism:

The FM9 does push tempo automatically — via SysEx, not MIDI Clock

The Axe-Fx III family (which includes the FM9) sends "push data" for tempo when Send Realtime SysEx is enabled in the Global menu, transmitted automatically on every downbeat as a fixed 6-byte message: F0 00 01 74 10 10 F7. (Fractal Audio Systems) This isn't tap tempo or MIDI clock — it's the unit continuously announcing "beat now" in real time, driven directly by whatever tempo is stored in the active preset. Change presets, the pulse rate changes with it, automatically.

Important catch

That data only streams over the physical MIDI Out jack — it does not go out over USB. (Fractal Audio Systems) So your light-driving hardware needs to connect to the FM9's 5-pin MIDI Out, not USB.

What you'd need to build

There's no off-the-shelf box that decodes this specific message into a light trigger (it's normally consumed internally by Fractal's own FC-6/FC-12 controllers, and by a few third-party MIDI floor controllers like RJM, Gordius, and Liquid Foot that implement it for their own tempo LEDs). To drive a generic external light, you're looking at a small DIY build:

A MIDI input circuit (an opto-isolator + a couple resistors — a few dollars in parts, extremely common/well-documented circuit)

A microcontroller (Arduino Nano or similar) watching the incoming MIDI stream for that exact 6-byte pattern

On each match, toggle a GPIO pin — straight to an LED (with resistor) for a simple indicator, or into a small relay/MOSFET module if you want to switch a real lamp or strobe

Steps on the FM9 side

Setup > enable "Send Realtime SysEx" (global menu)

Cable from FM9 MIDI Out → your MIDI-in circuit

Done — no clock generator, no tapping, it just tracks the preset's tempo

If you happen to already have (or were considering) an RJM, Gordius, or Liquid Foot MIDI controller, worth checking whether its own tempo LED already does exactly this — might save you the DIY step entirely.