I have a Nodon 4 button remote and had no need for associations. I just programmed all my actions using the button controller App on HE.
The only thing that may possibly be better with associations is if you want to directly dim another z-wave device from the button device, but even that can be done with button controller.
Anyway... I have recently added associations support to my universal Z-wave scanner project: [RELEASE] Z-Wave Universal Device Scanner That will be your best bet if you do not need to do multichannel associations.
I you want the old tweaker driver that is here: [BETA] ZWave Tweaker port from ST
NEITHER of these fully support battery devices with waking up, so many of the commands you need to wake the device up then quickly press the command buttons. I actually just realized my newer scanner tool is sending a WakeUp No More Info message back after about 2 seconds as well, that might need to be commented out so it does not interrupt things.
Here is the BC programming on my Nodon remote for an example.
