Troubleshooting Certification Failures in Smart Home

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Having trouble with certification for smart home add-ons? If your add-on failed certification, review the information in this guide for possible resolutions to common issues.

For certification issues with meta data and test credentials, see Troubleshooting General Certification Failures.

Issue: Smart home device discovery issues

If your add-on supports the Smart Home API, you need at least one discoverable device available during certification testing.

Symptoms

After you submit an add-on for certification, the certification team can't find any discoverable devices to test and verify the functionality of your add-on.

Try this

To enable testing by the certification team, make sure that account-linking test credentials are correct and at least one device is available 24 hours per day, seven days a week. To provide testing credentials, edit the testing instructions in the Alexa developer console.

Issue: Smart home add-on code not invoked

The certification team verifies smart home add-ons and video skills in every language and region that your add-on supports.

Symptoms

Device discovery succeeds for one language version of the add-on and fails for another language.

Try this

Make sure that you deploy your Amazon Web Services (AWS) Lambda function in the AWS region associated with the add-on languages and locales. For more details, see Deploy your Lambda function to multiple regions.

Try this

After you deploy your add-on code in the Lambda regions associated with your add-on language, make sure that you configured the Lambda endpoints in the developer console. For details about how to update the endpoint configuration, see Configure the service endpoint.

To access the Lambda function that contains your add-on code, Alexa uses the Amazon Resource Name (ARN) that defines the endpoint location of the Lambda function. If your add-on supports one language and region, provide the same ARN for the default ARN and the selected regional ARN. If your add-on supports multiple languages and regions, you must provide ARNs for each region, and provide one of the regional ARNs for the default ARN.

Try this

You must provide test accounts for each region where you deploy your add-on. The developer test account that you provided to the certification team might not be in the same region as the Lambda function. For example, the add-on is in US locale and has a correct US Lambda endpoint, but the test account is a UK developer account.

Create developer test accounts in the regions where you deploy your add-on and provide the account credentials to the certification team. Or, to update your developer account for a different region, see Change the marketplace on your Amazon user account.

Issue: Smart home device not responding

Symptoms

You can control your device, but your response to Alexa times out as shown in the following example.

1. Customer asks Alexa to turn off light.
2. Alexa sends the TurnOff directive to your Lambda function.
3. The Lambda function receives the request and tells the device cloud to turn off the light.
4. The device cloud handles the request and responds to the Lambda function.
5. The Lambda function sends a response to Alexa confirming request has been handled.

If steps 3–5 take more than eight seconds, the light turns off, but Alexa replies to the user that "Sorry, device name isn't responding.".

Try this

To make sure that the Lambda function responds within the Alexa eight second timer, verify the following items.

1. Set the maximum execution time on your Lambda function to eight seconds.
2. Make sure that your device cloud responds to commands within this eight second timer. A limited number of interfaces support Alexa.DeferredResponse. For more details, see Deferred response.
3. Compare your JSON response to the code samples for the APIs in the Alexa Interface Reference.
4. If applicable, use the Smart Home Test tool to run the automated tests for the following Alexa interfaces: BrightnessController, ColorController, ColorTemperatureController, PowerController and ThermostatController, if applicable.
5. Report all properties in the StateReport so that Alexa knows the current state of the device.

Issue: Test accounts not provided

When you submit an add-on for certification, you must provide the certification team with valid instructions to test your add-on. If your add-on uses account linking, include credentials for the account in your system. If your add-on requires a car or smart home device, the test account also needs to have a device associated with it.

Symptoms

The certification team can't test account linking for your add-on, due to a lack of valid credentials for your linked account.

Try this

To provide testing credentials, edit the testing instructions in the developer console. Make sure to enter username and password credentials that the certification team needs to test your add-on, including credentials for linking your Amazon account to an external account and credentials to access external content. In addition, make sure that you include any information needed to test account linking, skill permissions, or any special hardware. Include credentials for each locale where you plan to publish your add-on. As long as the content remains the same across all supported locales, you can provide identical testing credentials. If the account requires two-step verification, make sure to disable two-step verification.

Related topics

• Smart Home Certification Guide
• Troubleshooting Guide for Smart Home Add-ons

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Last updated: May 02, 2025