Thanks for the pointer. Seems to be a an odd and esoteric way to do it.
So assuming you have one of the switches that supports "Instant Status" and you correctly associate the switch back to the controller, do you see anything in the HouseBot ZWave interface trace? It doesn't sound like there's anything additional that the controller needs to do to get this status info once the association is in place. Granted, I would need to implement logic in the hardware interface to recognize group 1 (and maybe 4) commands as on/off notifications, but that should be easy once the data stream is there.
I think I need to pick up an ACT master controller for programming. The Intermatic controller doesn't support group or scene association. At this point (network set up with Intermatic MC and transfered to USB MC), I see no Z-wave USB MC activity on the trace when I sit and push the switch.