Xiaomi’s current robot vacuum cleaners and the Mijia ecosystem have impressive functionality that allows you to manage cleaning with an accuracy of a centimeter. Instead of running the device at full power throughout the apartment, smart technology allows you to allocate separate areas for rapid cleaning, which is especially true when you need to quickly clean the kitchen after lunch or remove the crumbs in the nursery without making noise throughout the house.
To implement this function, it is critical to have a built-in map of the room. Without a pre-stored plan of dwelling in the device memory, the selective room cleaning function will not be available. The system must clearly “understand” where the walls, furniture and boundaries between the various rooms are located in order to correctly execute the user command.
In this guide, we will discuss all the nuances of configuring maps, dividing rooms and starting cleaning in selected areas through the Mi Home app. You will learn how to fix room recognition errors and which models support advanced navigation functions. Competent scenarios will significantly extend the battery life and improve the efficiency of the robot vacuum cleaner.
Requirements for equipment and software version
Before you start fine-tuning zones, you need to make sure that your equipment is technically capable of doing this. Not all budget models have a built-in laser rangefinder or a camera for navigation, which is a prerequisite for working with maps. Devices with chaotic type of movement or gyroscopic navigation of the entry level often do not have the ability to save the room plan.
The second important aspect is the relevance of the software: developers regularly add new room recognition algorithms and improve connection stability. If the Mi Home app does not have the right options, check for updates for the vacuum cleaner and plugin of the device.
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Use the original power adapter when you initially set up the card to avoid suddenly shutting down at a critical point in your plan.
Also, consider the state of the sensors: a contaminated laser head or a taped camera can lead to errors in map construction, which will cause the room separation function to work incorrectly. Regular maintenance is the key to accurate navigation.
- 🤖 Presence of lidar (LDS) or visual navigation (VSLAM) vacuum-model.
- 📱 Installed and authorized Mi Home app (account region must match device region).
- 📶 Stable connection to the 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi network.
- 🧹 Clean sensors and pre-removed wires and small items.
Primary construction and preservation of the map
The foundation for any intelligent cleaning is a quality map. If you just bought a Xiaomi robot vacuum cleaner, the first step should always be a complete cleanup of all available space, at which point the device scans the space, building a virtual model of your home.
When you first start, make sure all the doors to the rooms are open and the robot starts from the charging base. Don't interrupt the process, don't move the base, and try not to interfere with the movement of the device. Once you complete the cycle, the map will automatically be saved to the cloud and will be linked to your account.
If the map is curved or broken, it can be reset and recreated. In the map settings in the app, select the option to delete the current plan. Resetting the card often helps solve the problem of "losing" the device in space.
It is important to note that separate maps can be created for different floors (if the model supports multi-mode maps), which allows you to use one vacuum cleaner in a two-story house, simply moving the base to the desired level.
Dividing the map into rooms and renaming
Once the plan is saved, the system can perceive it as a single space or divide it into zones automatically. However, automatic separation does not always correspond exactly to the actual layout. For example, the kitchen and living room can be combined into one large area, which is inconvenient for selective cleaning.
To manually adjust, go to map editing mode (usually an edit button or a pencil icon) and there are tools available to divide and merge zones. Using the "Separate" tool, draw a line where the virtual doorway should pass.
☑️ Setting up rooms
Each designated area needs to be given a name. It's not just aesthetics: it's by name ("Kitchen," "Bedroom," "Corridor") that you'll give voice commands or select zones in the interface. The standard set of names includes the basic types of rooms, but you can often create custom tags.
⚠️ Attention: The separation lines must be clearly along walls or doorways. If the line touches a virtual carpet or exclusion zone, the logic of the device may be disrupted.
After separation and naming, remember to save the changes. Now your robot vacuum cleaner "knows" that the apartment is made up of separate functional blocks, and is ready to execute point commands.
Start cleaning in the selected room through the application
When the map is divided and the rooms are named, the process of starting a cleaning in a specific area becomes elementary. Open the Mi Home app, select your vacuum cleaner, and go to the main map control screen, you will see a plan of the apartment with signed rooms.
To start cleaning in one room, just click on the desired area on the map. From the menu that opens, select the type of cleaning: "Silent", "Standard", "Powerful" or "Maximum" and you can also choose the mode of operation: only vacuum or vacuum with wet wipe (if the model supports).
If you want to remove some, but not all, rooms, use multiple choice mode, usually by pressing one room, and then by holding your finger or using a special selection tool, mark the remaining areas. After selecting all the target areas, press the start button.
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Choosing multiple rooms at once saves time, as the robot will build the optimal route between the selected areas, ignoring the others.
And while you're working, you can actually watch the device move on your smartphone screen, and if the robot makes a mistake and goes the wrong way, you can pause the process, manually adjust the route, or send it back to base.
Use of virtual walls and exclusion zones
Sometimes it's not enough to send a vacuum cleaner into a room, but you also have to stop it from going into certain places inside the room, like a nursery designer, and a living room room with a long pile that you don't want to wet, and there are virtual restrictions.
There are three main types of restrictions available in the card settings:
- 🚫 No-Go Zones: Square or rectangular areas where the robot will not enter under any circumstances.
- 🧱 Virtual Walls: Invisible Lines That Robots Perceive as Physical Obstacles.
- 🚿 No-Washing Zones: Special areas where the robot can drive for dry cleaning, but will not lower the wet wipe module.
You set these constraints in the map edit mode, you select the type of restriction, you place it on the plan in the right place and you save it, and these settings are stored in the device's memory and are valid every time you run them until you delete them.
This is particularly useful for protecting areas where the robot can suck the cable, or where there is a bowl of water for animals, and using virtual walls to make the machines safer.
Automation: schedules for individual rooms
Manual start-up is convenient, but the real magic of a smart home is automation. You can set the schedule so that the robot cleans specific rooms at specific times without you being involved. For example, you can clean the kitchen every day at 10 a.m. until you have a robot that cleans specific rooms at a specific time.