Owners of modern cleaning gadgets often face the need to personalize the cleaning process. Just running the device on the entire apartment is not enough, especially if one part of the house requires thorough processing, and the other – fast passage, which is why the question of how to give a robot vacuum cleaner Xiaomi a room becomes relevant immediately after purchase and initial configuration of the device.
The Mi Home ecosystem allows you to flexibly manage the behavior of smart equipment, dividing living space into logical zones. It is not just a whim, but a necessity to maintain order in homes with complex layouts or the presence of pets. The correct configuration of maps helps the device to spend more battery power and not waste time on already cleaned areas.
In this article, we will take a closer look at all the steps in creating and editing maps, and answer technical nuances that are often overlooked during the initial launch, and learn how to create virtual restrictions and assign different cleaning modes to different rooms, which will turn your gadget into a truly intelligent assistant.
Preparation for the creation of a room map
Before we begin to divide space, we need to provide the ideal conditions for building a primary map. The robot must have a full battery charge and clean sensors, as any contamination on the laser rangefinder (LDS) or optical sensors can lead to distortion of the geometry of the room. The laser module is the main eye of the device, and its purity is critical for accuracy of navigation.
It is recommended to conduct a preliminary general cleaning: remove wires, toys, clothes and other small objects from the floor that can confuse the wheels or be mistaken as an obstacle. The freer the space during the first passage, the more accurately the digital twin of your apartment will form in the memory of the device.
It’s also important to make sure that the Mi Home app has the latest firmware for your model, and developers regularly release updates to mapping algorithms that improve wall and doorway recognition, and if the software is outdated, room sharing may not work properly or at all.
- 🧹 Remove all foreign objects from the floor before launch.
- 🔋 Charge the device to 100% before starting the map.
- 📡 Make sure you have a stable connection to the Wi-Fi router.
- 🧼 Wipe the sensors and laser rangefinder with dry cloth.
⚠️ Warning: Do not attempt to divide rooms on a map until a full map of the entire apartment has been built and maintained. editing an unfinished or partial map can cause a navigation system to crash.
After all the preparatory steps, you can go to the actual construction of the map, start the robot vacuum cleaner in full cleaning mode and wait until it returns to base, and only after successfully completing the cycle and saving the map in the cloud or in the memory of the phone can you start editing it.
Building a primary map and preserving it
The mapping process begins with the first full cleaning cycle, during which time the device scans the room, constructing the contours of the walls and fixing the location of stationary objects, and the user should not interfere with the operation of the device, although modern models of Xiaomi Vacuum are smart enough to ignore the random movement of people.
When the device returns to the charging station, the application will be notified of the readiness of the card. At this stage, it is important not to rename the device or change the region in the application settings, as this can cause data to be desynchronized.
If the apartment is multi-level, it is worth noting that standard models support keeping multiple maps, but switching between floors requires manual confirmation or transfer of the base. For single-storey apartments, this is not a problem, and the system will automatically remember the location of the rooms after the first successful passage.
In some cases, if the layout is very complex or the house has many mirrored surfaces, the map can be built with errors, in which case you may need to re-start or use the restore function of the map through the service menu.
Map editing tools in the Mi Home app
The Mi Home interface provides a powerful toolkit for mapping. To get into the editing menu, you need to open the device map and find the settings button or the map icon, and that's where the functionality is, allowing the Xiaomi robot vacuum cleaner to set the room and define its boundaries.
The main tool is the separation and merging function, so you can draw a virtual line across a room to split it into two, or you can combine the hallway and the living room into one big cleaning area, which is especially useful in studio apartments where there are no clear physical boundaries between the rooms.
And you can also use the Virtual Wall or the No-Go tool to identify places that a robot should never go, like around an animal tray or under chairs with thin legs that it might get stuck in, and the accuracy of these areas is extremely high, and it protects delicate interior items.
☑️ Pre-editing checks
It's important to understand that all changes are instant, but they often require restarting the cleaning task to take effect, and if you make changes while you're parking, the next run will be the new scenario.
How to divide the map into separate rooms
The most common user request is "how to divide a map." To do this, select the editing tool "Split" from the editing menu. You will be asked to draw a cut line. Try to draw a line from wall to wall or from wall to large object, so that the gap is complete.
Once you split, you can name each new zone, and the system offers the standard names: Living room, Kitchen, Bedroom, but you can type in arbitrary names, and naming helps with voice control through smart speakers if you're using integration with AliExpress Tmall Genie or other assistants.
If you draw a line wrong, use the Merge tool, which allows you to combine two adjacent areas back into one, and be careful when dividing narrow corridors, because too small a zone can be ignored by the route planning algorithm.
| Tool. | Function | When to use |
|---|---|---|
| Split (Split) | Divide one zone by two | For a studio or large rooms |
| Merger (Merge) | It's a two-zone combination. | If the separation is through the door |
| The no-go zone | Creates an invisible wall | To protect carpets or bowls |
| Virtual wall | Linear barrier | To block the entrance to the room |
Once you've split the map, the system may require you to recalculate the cleaning area, which is a normal procedure that takes a few seconds, and make sure that the names of the rooms are the actual location, so that you don't get confused in the future when choosing a cleaning area through voice commands.
What to do if the lines are not saved?
Set up cleaning modes for different zones
One of the key features of the platform is to assign individual settings to each room, so you can set the robot to have maximum suction power and double-pass in the kitchen, and quiet in the bedroom.
To set up, select the desired room on the map and click on the settings icon (usually a gear or three dots). Here you can choose the mode of operation: Quiet, Standard, Turbo or Maximum. You can also adjust the cleaning type: "Floor only", "Floor and carpet" or "Carpet only" (for models with carpet function).
You can also tie your cleaning schedule to specific rooms, such as the kitchen being cleaned every day at 10 a.m., and the living room only on weekends, which can save a lot of battery life and extend the life of the filter and brushes.
- 🔇 Quiet mode is ideal for the bedroom while sleeping.
- 🌪️ Turbo mode is necessary for carpets with high pile.
- 💧 Including wet cleaning only for hard coatings.
- 🔄 Double passage for heavily polluted areas.
Remember that different modes require different amounts of power, and if you plan to do intensive cleaning of multiple rooms in a row, make sure the battery is fully charged, or turn on the Recharge and Continue function.
Use of virtual walls and forbidden areas
The virtual restriction feature is one of the most useful for pet owners and children, and the virtual wall creates an invisible barrier that the robot doesn't cross, which allows you to block access to certain rooms without having to install physical magnetic tapes that were used in older models.
The No-Go Zone works a little differently, it's a square or rectangular area where the robot is not allowed to enter. Unlike a wall that can be drawn through the entire apartment, the zone is limited in size, ideal for insulating water bowls, wires or fragile figurines on the floor.
⚠️ Warning: Virtual walls and no-go zones are stored in the robot's memory. If you've moved furniture or remodeled the interior, remember to remove or move virtual restrictions, otherwise the robot may begin to remove inefficiently, bypassing open space.
The maximum number of virtual walls and zones can be limited by the device model, which is usually 10-20 objects per map, and if the limit is exhausted, the app will not allow you to add a new restriction until you remove the old one.
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Save card backups. Before you make a major edit or move, take a screenshot of the map or export the settings if the model supports cloud-based profile saving.
Using these tools makes cleaning predictable, you know exactly where the robot will be and which areas will remain intact, and this is especially important for owners of dark carpets, which some sensors may mistakenly perceive as a cliff (step) and avoid.
Frequent errors in setting up rooms
When you try to customize rooms, users often make the same mistakes, one of which is creating too small areas, and if the area of the room is less than 1-2 square meters, the robot may consider this a scanning error and ignore the area or, conversely, get stuck trying to get around it.
Another mistake is to put virtual walls on top of each other, which can create pockets that the robot can't get out of, or, conversely, completely block access to part of the apartment, and always check the map after making changes, running a test cleaning.
Also, the problem is that you can't keep your maps updated when you rearrange furniture, so if you move your sofa or table and the virtual obstacles stay in the old places, the efficiency of cleaning will drop, and you can check your digital map regularly against the actual state of affairs.
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The accuracy of the map depends on the purity of the sensors and the absence of temporary obstacles during the first construction.
If the robot is constantly losing map or getting confused in rooms, perhaps the problem is not the settings, but the technical state of the sensors or the laser module, in which case the software settings will not help, you will need hardware diagnostics.