Problems reading and interpreting Electronics Datasheets
Problem Description
It seems that Codex (and ChatGPT Web) is unable to read electronic datasheets.
The problem is complicated because of the nature of those sheets:
- They are mostly in PDF format instead of plain text
- Contain complexly formatted tables
- e. g. row and column spans
- color-encoded information
- annotations
<img width="1448" height="824" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/20f06585-bc7e-4034-9985-1fbc6a4e4198" />
- Contain graphs in various formats that need to be precisely interpreted for numerical values:
<img width="601" height="536" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/eaae58b1-5f6b-4980-b6be-59bf90bf475d" />
- Contain function diagrams that explain the basic functionality of components
<img width="633" height="514" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/d8fa2df3-78ce-4c69-9814-6a52f53b473d" />
- Pin Layout Diagrams
<img width="276" height="220" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/03a213c5-6fbb-4564-b24f-a0e70d0c8257" />
- Electrical diagrams that current language and vision models cannot interpret
<img width="1213" height="684" alt="Image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/b525bc93-32bf-480b-b638-d90a5593b0e7" />
- Different norms for drawing and naming components
- e. g. a rectangle for resistors vs. the old sawtooth-symbol
Current vision models seem to struggle even with property recognizing even very simple components.
- e. g. recognizing a BJT Darlington Circuit, when the diagram only shows a single FET transistor with multiple pins
- not beeing able to trace electrical connections correctly
- not beeing able to trace connections when buses and named connections are used for indicating a connection
Suggestions
Because of the limitations of current models, I think this can't be solved in Codex currently even with plugins for specialized tasks. (Similar to how current models are unable to do 2D/3D CAD work)
My suggestion is therefore to create a benchmark for reading datasheets.
References
- Screenshots are taken from the AD658 datasheet
Sources
Sources for Datasheets (some examles)