First attempt to merge accumulated changes from legacy master branch

Manually integrated the following changes from b8466a (master 2015-11-13)

- Blackboard classes by hvanwelbergen
- Blackboard test by hvanwelbergen
- Payload merge fix by hvanwelbergen
- rsb Buffer fix (by myself) copied but inactive (not needed atm?)

Please refer to the logs of the legacy-str branch for a full history
of the respective changes.