Modern robot vacuum cleaners are no longer just blind circular devices running around the apartment. Xiaomi models are famous for their advanced navigation that allows the user to take control. Often there is a need to clean only a specific area of the floor, for example, near the dining table or in the hallway after a walk with a dog.
This process is managed through the company’s Mi Home app (or Xiaomi Home), which links your smartphone to the robot. Despite the apparent simplicity of the interface, beginners often face difficulties in initially setting up or updating room maps. In this article, we will discuss in detail how to add a cleaning area, why the robot can ignore commands and how to avoid typical errors.
Preparation of the robot and applications for setting up
Before you start drawing zones on your smartphone screen, you need to make sure that your device’s database is up to date.The robot must have a correct room map built with a laser rangefinder (LDS) or a camera (VSLAM). If you’ve just moved or rearranged furniture, it’s best to start a full cleaning operation to update the map in the device’s memory.
Make sure your smartphone is connected to the same Wi-Fi network as the vacuum cleaner. A stable Internet connection is critical for synchronizing commands. In the Mi Home app, go to the home page of the device. If status shows "Offline", no settings can be applied.
💡
Before setting up, make sure that the robot battery is charged at least 20%, otherwise it can go to base at the most inopportune time.
The interface of the application may vary slightly depending on the firmware version and the region to which the account is linked. For users from Russia and CIS, the most common servers available are Russia or Europe. If you do not see some features, you may need to change the region in the profile settings, but this will require re-associating the device.
Creation of a spot cleaning zone (Spot Clean)
Area Cleaning allows you to select a rectangular area that the robot will clean with great care, ideal for the kitchen or the children's room, where contamination is more common, and to activate this mode, open the map in the application and find a button with a square or dotted area.
You'll see a frame that you can move around and change in size. With your finger, you'll set the coordinates of the center of the zone and stretch the boundaries to the right scale. It's important to understand that the minimum size of the zone is limited by algorithms -- a robot that's too small can ignore or process as a dot.
- 📍 Click the Zone button on the bottom map control panel.
- 📏 Stretching the rectangle to the right size, covering the problem area.
- 🔄 If necessary, turn the area so that it coincides with the direction of movement along the walls.
- ✅ Press the Start button to send the robot to the specified point.
⚠️ Warning: The robot will move toward the center of the given zone in the shortest possible way, ignoring the areas already removed if they lie on its route.
Once the cycle is complete, the robot will return to the base to recharge if the energy level allows, but if the charge is low, it can complete the work immediately after cleaning the zone. In some models with mopping, you can separately adjust the water intensity for this zone.
Configuring virtual walls and forbidden areas
Sometimes you don't have to add a zone, you just have to remove it from the map. Virtual walls are a powerful tool to restrict the robot's access to certain places, like a pet tray or long-pile carpets, and unlike physical magnetic tapes that were glued to the floor in older models, it's software-based.
From the map menu, select Virtual Wall or No-Go tool, and you can draw a line that the robot won't cross, or paint over an area where it's not allowed to enter, and the system will remember those restrictions even after you reboot or change the map, if it's stored in the cloud.
☑️ Verification of virtual restrictions
There is an important caveat: if you draw a no-go zone over an existing object on a map (like a sofa), the robot will still consider that area inaccessible. However, if you decide to move furniture, remember to update the virtual restrictions, otherwise the robot may get stuck in an attempt to bypass a non-existent obstacle.
For models with multi-storey mapping, virtual wall settings are tied to a specific floor. If you move the robot to another floor where the map has already been created, the old restrictions will not apply until you activate the corresponding floor in the application.
Cleaning schedule for specific rooms
One of the most convenient features of the Xiaomi ecosystem is the ability to create schedules not only for the entire apartment, but also for individual rooms, especially for large houses where the full cleaning cycle takes a long time, or for studio apartments that are logically divided into zones.
To set up this schedule, go to the Schedule and select Add. In the menu that appears, instead of the All Apartment option, select Rooms or Zones, and here you will see a list of rooms that the robot recognized when building the map (Kitchen, Living Room, Bedroom, etc.).
| Parameter | Description | Recommendation |
|---|---|---|
| Start time. | Time to start cleaning | Install when you are not home. |
| Power mode | Suction force | "Quiet" for the night, "Max" for carpets |
| Repeats | Days of the week | Daily or weekday |
| Choice of rooms | List of zones | Only frequently contaminated |
You can create multiple schedules with different parameters, for example, in the morning on weekdays, the robot will quickly clean only the kitchen and corridor, and on weekends, conduct deep cleaning in all rooms with maximum suction power.
What if the robot can’t see the room?
Editing of the map and division of premises
Automatic room recognition works well, but it's not perfect. Often, a robot combines the kitchen and the living room into one huge area, or, conversely, divides one room into two because of the high threshold, and you need to fix the map to work properly with the cleaning areas.
In map editing mode, you can use the tools "Separate", "Combine" and "Rename" to artificially create boundaries where there are no physical boundaries (such as an arch opening), which will allow you to clean only one part of the space in the future.
Once you split, make sure to name the rooms from the list, and it's not just cosmetics, because voice control through Alice or Google Assistant works by those names, and you can say, "Clean up the kitchen," and the robot will go to the area you've named.
⚠️ Note: When editing a map, all previously installed virtual walls and no-go zones can be removed. Always check for them after any changes in the geometry of the room.
Solution: Robot ignores zone
Users often experience a situation where a given zone is ignored and the robot continues to clean the entire house or drives away to the opposite corner, most often because of the desynchronization of the map, if you physically moved the base of the vacuum cleaner, but did not update its position in the application, the coordinates of the zones can "go away."
Try to manually drag the robot icon on the map to where it actually is, and then in control mode, select the robot and use the "Move" function. Then try to start cleaning the zone again, and it also helps to completely reset the map and build it again in a clean room.
Another reason is low battery power, and if the robot sees that there's not enough power to return to base after completing an additional task, it may ignore the command or interrupt it, and watch the charge indicator before running complex scenarios.
💡
Synchronization of the real position of the base and its display on a digital map is a key factor in the successful operation of zonal cleaning.
Smart Home Integration and Voice Control
Xiaomi's ecosystem allows you to integrate a robot into common smart home scenarios, so you can set up an automatic cleanup operation when you meet other conditions, for example, when you leave the house (the geolocation of the phone shows the distance from the base), the robot starts cleaning the hallway.
Voice assistants support room-specific commands if they're properly named in the app. Phrases like "Xia, clean under the table" don't work directly yet without creating complex scripts, but "Clean the kitchen" or "Clean the living room" commands are executed flawlessly. Use your assistant's word to activate.
Integration with the Home Assistant platform for advanced users is also available, and you can create complex algorithms, such as running a cleaning area at the front door immediately after the smart lock lock locks the door open, but only if it rains outside (data is taken from the Internet).