I think you are facing several problems:

a) mlogger does not clearly explain what history names will be used for which entries
in /eq/xxx/variables. "mlogger -v" almost does it, but we also need
"mlogger -v -n" to "show what you will do, but do not do it yet".

b) the mfe.c and the device class driver structure is very dated, tries to "do c++ in c". If it works for you,
certainly use it, but if it confuses you (as it confuses me), it probably only takes a few lines of c++
to replace the whole thing (minus the actual device drivers, which is the meat of it).

It think today, you face a choice:
- invest some time to understand the old device driver framework
- invest some time to do it "by hand" in c++, write your own device drivers (or use 3rd party drivers or snarf the "c" drivers from midas). Use the TMFE C++ frontend class if you go this route.

I would estimate that both choices are about the same amount of work.

K.O.


> 1. ok, so calling the same readout functions from different equipments is just a bad idea, my bad, no blame for Midas to write data from both bank to both odb trees ...
> 
> 2. One needs the same amount of bank entries as the size of settings/names[] . Otherwise the "History Log" flag does not work. So just don`t us "names" but "channel names" or something. 
> 
> " Second, it's advisable to group similar equipment into one. Like if you have five power supplies powering
> and experiment, you don't want to have five equipments Supply1, Supply2, ..., but only one equipment
> "Power Supplies".  "
> 
> It would be nice if this also works with c++ style drivers, i.e. a instance of a class. I don`t now how one would give an entry point to the "DEVICE_DRIVER" struct then.
> 
> 
> 
> > I wanted to have a c++ style driver, e.g. a instance of a "PowerSupply" class. This was not compatible with the list of DEVICE_DRIVER structs, with needs a C function entry point with variable arguments. 
> > 
> > Anyways, I attach my odb. I believe the issue stands regardless of the specific design choice here. Setting the History Log flag copies the banks created to the "Variables" of every equipments initialized, leading to a mismatch between the names array, and the variables. Can be solved by not using FE history events, but Virtual, but the flag in the Equipment is confusing.  
> > 
> > Bank creation in readout function:
> > 
> > for(const auto& d: drivers)
> > {
> > ...
> > ...
> >   bk_create(pevent,bk_name, TID_FLOAT, (void **)&pdata);
> > ...			
> >   std::vector<float> voltage = d->GetVoltage();
> >   std::vector<float> current = d->GetCurrent();
> >   for(channels)
> >   {
> >     *pdata++ = voltage.at(iChannel);
> >     *pdata++ = current.at(iChannel);
> >   }
> >   bk_close(pevent, pdata);
> > }