Use the Smart Home Debugger

You can use the Smart Home Debugger to test and debug your Smart Home skill. By using the Smart Home debugger, your can view the ChangeReport, AddOrUpdateReport, and DeleteReport events that Alexa receives from your skill, including your JSON, and any processing errors. For more information about other test tools, see Test and Debug Your Smart Home Skill.

If you implement the Alexa.RTCSessionController interface in your Alexa skill, also see Use the Smart Home Debugger for WebRTC Skills.

You proactively report state to Alexa in ChangeReport events. You identify the properties that you proactively report in your discovery response. For more information about change reports, see Understand State and Change Reporting.

Note: You can only see information for the Amazon account that you use to sign in to the Alexa developer console. This tool doesn't show information from other Amazon accounts.

Prerequisites

To use the Smart Home debugger, your Smart Home skill must send ChangeReport, AddOrUpdateReport, or DeleteReport events to Alexa.

Accessing the Smart Home debugger

To view the Smart Home debugger

Open the Alexa developer console and log in.
Open the Smart Home skill associated with your Smart Home device.
Open the Test page.
Enable testing for the skill.
At the top of the page, select Device Log and Smart Home Debugger.
In the Smart Home Debugger section of the page, use the toggle to enable Smart Home debugger.

After you complete the procedure, when you send a ChangeReport, AddOrUpdateReport, or DeleteReport event to Alexa, the event information is added to the device log.

Viewing events

The Smart Home debugger shows the ChangeReport, AddOrUpdateReport, and DeleteReport events that Alexa receives from your skill, for the Amazon account that you used to sign in to the Alexa developer console. Each event in the device log contains a JSON document with details about the event that Alexa received. The following is an image of the Smart Home debugger.

Note: The events that you see in the device log are not persistent. When you close your browser tab, the events disappear from the device log. If you open the tool in more than one browser tab, the events appear only in the most recent active browser tab.

If you encounter problems with the Smart Home debugger, use the Alexa Developer Contact Us page to let us know.

Example ChangeReport event with success

The following example shows the log in the Smart Home debugger for a ChangeReport event that Alexa is able to process successfully.

{
  "header": {
    "customerId": "<customer id>",
    "skillId": "<skill id>",
    "skillStage": "development",
    "eventType": "SmartHomeChangeReportSuccess",
    "messageId": "<message id>",
    "applianceId": "ALL"
  },
  "payload": {
    "request": {
      "event": {
        "header": {
          "namespace": "Alexa",
          "name": "ChangeReport",
          "messageId": "<message id>",
          "payloadVersion": "3"
        },
        "endpoint": {
          "scope": {
            "type": "BearerToken",
            "token": "<an OAuth2 bearer token>"
          },
          "endpointId": "<endpoint id>"
        },
        "payload": {
          "change": {
            "cause": {
              "type": "PHYSICAL_INTERACTION"
            },
            "properties": [
              {
                "namespace": "Alexa.BrightnessController",
                "name": "brightness",
                "value": 75,
                "timeOfSample": "2017-02-03T16:20:50.52Z",
                "uncertaintyInMilliseconds": 0
              }
            ]
          }
        }
      },
      "context": {
        "properties": [
          {
            "namespace": "Alexa.PowerController",
            "name": "powerState",
            "value": "ON",
            "timeOfSample": "2017-07-03T16:20:50.52Z",
            "uncertaintyInMilliseconds": 60000
          },
          {
            "namespace": "Alexa.EndpointHealth",
            "name": "connectivity",
            "value": {
              "value": "OK"
            },
            "timeOfSample": "2017-07-03T16:20:50.52Z",
            "uncertaintyInMilliseconds": 0
          }
        ]
      }
    }
  }
}

Example ChangeReport event with error

The following example shows the log in the Smart Home debugger for a ChangeReport event that Alexa is unable to process successfully, because the request contains errors. For more information, see understanding event errors.

{
  "header": {
    "customerId": "<customer id>",
    "skillId": "<skill id>",
    "skillStage": "development",
    "eventType": "SmartHomeChangeReportFailure",
    "messageId": "<message id>",
    "applianceId": "ALL"
  },
  "payload": {
    "errors": [
      {
        "code": "Duplicate_Payload_Property",
        "message": "duplicate property in the payload for brightness property"
      }
    ],
    "proactiveStateRequest": {
      "event": {
        "header": {
          "namespace": "Alexa",
          "name": "ChangeReport",
          "messageId": "<message id>",
          "payloadVersion": "3"
        },
        "endpoint": {
          "scope": {
            "type": "BearerToken",
            "token": "<an OAuth2 bearer token>"
          },
          "endpointId": "<endpoint id>"
        },
        "payload": {
          "change": {
            "cause": {
              "type": "PHYSICAL_INTERACTION"
            },
            "properties": [
              {
                "namespace": "Alexa.BrightnessController",
                "name": "brightness",
                "value": 75,
                "timeOfSample": "2017-02-03T16:20:50.52Z",
                "uncertaintyInMilliseconds": 0
              },
              {
                "namespace": "Alexa.BrightnessController",
                "name": "brightness",
                "value": 75,
                "timeOfSample": "2017-02-03T16:20:50.52Z",
                "uncertaintyInMilliseconds": 0
              }
            ]
          }
        }
      },
      "context": {
        "properties": [
          {
            "namespace": "Alexa.PowerController",
            "name": "powerState",
            "value": "ON",
            "timeOfSample": "2017-07-03T16:20:50.52Z",
            "uncertaintyInMilliseconds": 60000
          },
          {
            "namespace": "Alexa.EndpointHealth",
            "name": "connectivity",
            "value": {
              "value": "OK"
            },
            "timeOfSample": "2017-07-03T16:20:50.52Z",
            "uncertaintyInMilliseconds": 0
          }
        ]
      }
    }
  }
}

Understanding event errors

When your skill sends a ChangeReport, AddOrUpdateReport, or DeleteReport event to the Alexa event gateway, you receive an HTTP response from the gateway. For the full list of possible HTTP response codes, see Send Events to the Event Gateway.

When your skill receives a 202 Accepted response from the gateway, it means that Alexa received your event request successfully. However, there might be errors in the event that prevent Alexa from processing it correctly. In that case, the debugger log contains a SmartHomeChangeReportFailure, SmartHomeAddOrUpdateReportFailure, or SmartHomeDeleteReportFailure event that contains an array of errors in the payload.

Change report errors

The following table lists the error codes that you might see in the Smart Home debugger for a SmartHomeChangeReportFailure.

Note: The list of error codes is not exhaustive. You can see other error codes in addition to those listed.

Error Code	Description
`BEARER_TOKEN_NULL_OR_EMPTY`	The bearer token is missing or empty.
`CAUSE_NULL`	The `cause` object in the `payload` is missing.
`CAUSE_TYPE_NULL_OR_EMPTY`	The `cause` object is missing a `cause` type, or the type is empty.
`CLIENT_ID_NOT_AVAILABLE`	The client ID (customer ID) is missing.
`CONTEXT_NULL`	The `context` object is missing.
`CONTEXT_PROPERTIES_EMPTY`	The `properties` object in the `context` is empty.
`CONTEXT_PROPERTIES_NULL`	The `properties` object in the `context` is missing.
`CONTEXT_PROPERTY_NULL`	A property in the `properties` object in the `context` is missing.
`DIRECTED_USER_ID_NULL_OR_EMPTY`	The directed user ID is missing or empty.
`DUPLICATE_CONTEXT_PROPERTY`	The `context` contains two identical properties.
`DUPLICATE_PAYLOAD_PROPERTY`	The `payload` contains two identical properties.
`DUPLICATE_PROPERTY_MISMATCHED_VALUE`	A single property is reported twice, each with different values.
`ENDPOINT_ID_BLANK`	The endpoint ID is empty.
`ENDPOINT_ID_NULL`	The endpoint ID is missing.
`ENDPOINT_SCOPE_NULL`	The endpoint scope is missing.
`EVENT_ENDPOINT_NULL`	The event endpoint is missing.
`EVENT_HEADER_NULL`	The event header is missing.
`EVENT_NULL`	The event object is missing.
`EVENT_PAYLOAD_NULL`	The event payload is missing.
`HEADER_NAME_NULL`	The header name in the event object is null.
`HEADER_NAMESPACE_NULL`	The header namespace in the event object is null.
`HEADER_PAYLOAD_VERSION_NULL`	The payload version in the header in the event object is null.
`INVALID_ASYNC_EVENT`	The asynchronous response is missing a correlation token.
`INVALID_CHANGE_REPORT`	The `ChangeReport` contains a correlation token. A `ChangeReport` must not contain a correlation token.
`INVALID_HEADER_NAMESPACE`	The header namespace must contain the value `Alexa`.
`INVALID_PAYLOAD`	The payload could not be processed.
`INVALID_PAYLOAD_VERSION`	The payload could not be processed.
`INVALID_PROPERTY`	A property is invalid.
`MISSING_TIME_OF_SAMPLE`	The `timeOfSample` field in the `properties` object is missing.
`MISSING_UNCERTAINTY_IN_MILLIS`	The `uncertaintyInMilliseconds` field in the `properties` object is missing.
`NEGATIVE_TIME_OF_SAMPLE_DIFFERENCE`	The `timeOfSample` field contains a time that is after the `ChangeReport` was received.
`NEGATIVE_UNCERTAINTY_IN_MILLIS`	The `uncertaintyInMilliseconds` field contains a negative number. This number must be positive.
`PAYLOAD_PROPERTIES_EMPTY`	The `properties` object in the `payload` is empty.
`PAYLOAD_PROPERTIES_NULL`	The `properties` object in the `payload` is missing.
`PAYLOAD_PROPERTY_NULL`	A property in the `properties` object in the `payload` is missing.
`REQUEST_NULL`	The body of the request is missing.
`SCOPE_INVALID`	The endpoint scope is invalid.
`TIME_OF_SAMPLE_LARGER_THAN_THRESHOLD`	The `timeOfSample` field contains a time that is more than three seconds after the `ChangeReport` was received.
`UNCERTAINTY_IN_MILLIS_LARGER_THAN_THRESHOLD`	The `uncertaintyInMilliseconds` field contains a number larger than 14,400,000.
`UNKNOWN_PAYLOAD_VERSION`	The payload version is unsupported.
`USER_IDENTIFIER_NULL_OR_EMPTY`	The user ID is missing or empty.

AddOrUpdate report errors

The following table lists the error codes that you might see in the Smart Home debugger for a SmartHomeAddOrUpdateReportFailure.