Is a simple LM317-based laser diode driver safe for powering a laser diode?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuMngik0GR8 (the diagram is at 1:37)


I've been told the the proprietary drivers offer some extra protection from very short spikes (on power up and shutdown) in the current which laser diodes are very sensitive to and might be damaged from. But isn't the LM317 regulator taking care of that itself already?

I've been told this from people who actually sell commercial laser diodes so I'm thinking they might be showing some bias.


Question: Get information for Facebook page in Facebook API graph
Answer: Use some sort of Facebook API package, like https://github.com/pythonforfacebook/facebook-sdk available with pip install facebook-sdk.

import facebook
graph = facebook.GraphAPI()
page = graph.get_object('6127898346')
print '{} has {} likes.'.format(page['name'], page['likes'])


Easy way to save everything:

import json
with open('outf.json', 'w') as f:
    json.dump(page, f)