Smart Home Debugger Tool


Use the Smart Home Debugger with your Alexa Connect Kit (ACK)-based device to test and debug the smart home capability interfaces you're using. With the debugger, you can view events that Alexa receives from your ACK-based device, including your JSON, and any processing errors.

ACK Smart Home Debugger

Prerequisites

To use the smart home debugger for your ACK-based devices, you must meet the following prerequisites:

Use the smart home debugger

To access the ACK smart home debugger, sign-in the ACK console with the developer account associated with your product.

The ACK smart home debugger is based on the existing smart home debugger built for the Alexa Skills Kit (ASK). However, the ACK debugger only supports the Alexa.ChangeReport event. It doesn't support the Alexa.AddOrUpdateReport, and Alexa.DeleteReport events.

To use the smart home debugger

  1. Sign-in to the ACK console.
  2. In the left-hand navigation bar, click Developer Tools.
  3. In the Device Serial Number dropdown, select the ACK-based device you want to test.
  4. Toggle the Smart Home Debugger ON.
  5. In your Alexa app, select the ACK-based device you're testing and complete an action. For example, if you're testing a light switch, you could turn it on and off off.
  6. Under Device Log, a list of change reports appear.

    For example, if you're testing a light switch, you should see the PowerController.TurnOnand PowerController.TurnOff events in the device log panel. Next, inspect the JSON and make sure it's correct.

Example of change report

The following image shows an example of a PowerController.TurnOn and PowerController.TurnOff event in the device log panel. In this example, the device called second light (shown in the image of the Alexa app) was turned on and off, and the resulting JSON is shown in the console.

ACK Smart Home Debugger ACK Smart Home Debugger

Understanding event errors

To understand event errors, see the following ASK documentation, Use the Smart Home Debugger.


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Last updated: Nov 27, 2023