Interesting development but when is Z-Wave going to address the persistent problems that really turn users away such as the popcorn effect (can't control groups of devices in perfect unison),
There's no simple way to address that issue short of a total revamp of the core routing. Even that would be rate limited by the bandwidth, collision avoidance, and routing. Popcorn is only a problem once you have a few dozen devices and are using it for mass device control where you can see the devices from a common viantage point.
Associations can mitigate that to some extent by eliminating the need to route data through the controller. The controller could send fewer messages (i.e. All-Off to a few key devices) and then those devices send 1-hop messages to neighbor devices to mirror.
But that requires a very particular device topology, often using a hidden master switch, that most people won't have.
Matter/wifi could behave better because of the higher bandwidth allowing more sequential messages in a human-imperceptible time frame, assuming the cloud doesnt get in the way. However Matter/Thread is low-speed/short-range like zwave so those devices will experience similar popcorn.
no way to back up a controller from one manufacturer and restore to a different brand controller, or provide a wired keypad where buttons act as virtual switches in 3 or 4 way configurations instead of having buttons that can only trigger scenes?
Back up and restore is a maufacturer problem. Nothing prevents GoControl/Nortek from releasing a utility for the HUZB1 that does full backup/restore other than laziness/lack of profit. How much are you willing to pay for it?
Homeseer can do full backups and restores of their usb stick. You could buy the cheapest HS license for like $60 during black friday sales. you can then run the stick on different platforms.
I believe HS said the code for it is in the zwave SDK so you could maybe write your own if you knew the rest of chips in the stick and had that skillset.
provide a wired keypad where buttons act as virtual switches in 3 or 4 way configurations instead of having buttons that can only trigger scenes?
You have been able to do something similar with z-wave associations for years. I have 5-button hardwired Cooper scene controllers that do something like that.
However it can be a pain to set up so associations are being deprecated for central scene, which is easier to leverage with complex central controllers. Associations are great for certain edge cases but a pain for the 90% use case. So ZA is making the 90% use case much better.
I dislike the depreciation, (given that I have some of those scene controllers ), but I suspect it was pushback from scene controller makers who didn't want to have to support both (and maybe couldn't).
