Clinical blood pump consoles for extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) are poorly accessible to researchers due to their high cost. Furthermore, clinical machines are built and designed at a high level of information security, which limits their integration with third-party machines and software. These barriers hinder researchers from customizing blood pump consoles for their investigational needs, limiting innovations and advancements in the areas of blood pump automation and pulsation. To address these needs, we present on a programmable Smart Blood Pump console. This console can be assembled for under $200 and uses open-source tools including Arduino. Using this console, centrifugal blood pump heads can be operated at clinically relevant levels of flow and pressure needed in extracorporeal life support applications (>250 mmHg pressure head, >4 L/min of blood flow). Additionally, the programmable nature allows for utility beyond the standard indications of clinical extracorporeal blood pumps, including pulsatility and servo control. For future directions, this console will be further developed to accommodate a wider range of clinical pump heads. We envision that this will be an affordable, open-access platform to suit the varying needs of engineers and researchers for fostering innovations in ECMO technology.