The invention is directed to a programmer for communication with different medical devices that utilize different telemetry communication techniques. The programmer receives telemetry signals from a given medical device, and selects an appropriate communication mode, which can be pre-programmed into the programmer as one of a plurality of possible communication modes. The programmer can configure itself for communication with a given medical device based on the telemetry signal it receives. Specifically the programmer is implemented as a software based, power efficient receiver/transmitter based upon an inexpensive, simple motor-controller DSP.