All About Xiaomi's Mi Smart Home App

Note : All features, descriptions and screen captured for this write-ups are accurate at the time of writing, but are subject to changes due to the high pace of App changes and new devices being added, some features may no longer work, or some newly added.

About the App





Mi Smart Home app is your home intelligent hardware management platform. You can interact your Smart Phone with all the Xiaomi smart hardware and achieve inter-operability between them, and experience the convenience of intelligent life.

Mi Smart home Apps currently can manage the following Mi Ecosystem products : Air purifier Gen 1 & 2, Water Purifier, MiWiFi routers, Master Remote controller, MiTV, alll versions of MiBoxes,  Mi Smart Home Kits, Yi IP Cam, Yeelight LED Bulb, Smart Plug, Power Strip Panel, Internet Radio, Midea Air Conditioner, Aux Air conditioner, Junxing Air Conditioner and Philips Eyecare Lamp.

All the devices and settings are currently store on Mi Clouds, where you can easily backup and retrieve. Simply sign-in to the Mi Cloud with your Mi Account on a mobile phones, and all the saved configurations and settings are all retrieved on the new Smart Phones. 

Major Features Overview

a) Smart Links

The App is able to add new Mi Ecosystems intelligent devices in a simple manner for themselves
 


b) Device Control


The APP control all smart home appliances, and can be accessed from anywhere, as long as you have Internet access.
 


c) Share your family

You can share access to some of these device to family and friends and enjoy the convenience of a warm intelligent life together.

 


d) Intelligent Scene


You can go through simple setup to configure various easy and fun intelligent scenarios with other Mi ecosystems products.




New Features

1) Selecting your Hosting regions

In the past, Xiaomi only provide their Cloud hostings in China and users of the Mi Smart Home App outside China regularly facing "time-out" or "connection problems" whenever they are registering for new devices under the App. This is mostly due to the great China Firewall or DNS settings in local ISPs.

Starting from 2016, Xiaomi had added 3 more cloud locations for some of their major markets outside China, these locations are Singapore, Taiwan and India. You can now decide where to host your Smart Home App, where all your settings and configurations will be back up ONLY* to the cloud location that you had selected.

To choose the Mi Cloud location, you must logout first, then select the location, and log in again.

* Please note, your settings will only be saved on the cloud servers that you had selected, i.e if you initially select your location as Chinese Mainland, if you later log in and select Singapore, your settings will not be available as they are never saved on Singapore servers.

Note : At the time of this writing, not all regions support all devices released from Xiaomi, if you are buying products only available in China market, you'll probably still need to select Chinese mainland as the region. But due to the unpredictable China firewall, sometimes you may not be able to register and save your configuration & settings on Mi Cloud during the initial setup.

What is the minimum Android and iOS version supported for this app?

At the time of this write-up the minimum version of the major two mobile OS supported are as follow:
      Android - 4.0 and above
      iOS - 7.0 and above

But with the increasing addition of new Smart devices under Xiaomi's Mi Ecosystem product series, the Apps are continuously being updated by Xiaomi, whether they will withdraw support for certain older OS


Where to get and install the Mi Smart Home App?

You can access the latest version of the App at the official App site - http://home.mi.com/index.html, which is only available in Chinese interface, or download them by scanning the QR code below.


You can also get them from the respective official app stores.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.xiaomi.smarthome

https://itunes.apple.com/EN/app/xiao-mi-zhi-neng-jia-ting/id957323480?mt=8




** Please make sure you are downloading ONLY the official Apps and not from third party sources.


Further info

You can also visit their official Forum site for latest discussion and releases for Mi Smart Home App, but this site is only available in Chinese

http://bbs.xiaomi.cn/f-363

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Xiaomi Launches New Mi Wi-Fi Router With 6TB Storage

The new Xiaomi Mi Wi-Fi is said to deliver high-speed connectivity and additionally offer a storage space of up to 6TB. A 1TB variant has also been launched. The router supports 802.11 AC standard and is powered by a dual-core 1.4GHz Broadcom 4709c processor, clubbed with 512MB of RAM.

The new MiWiFi-2 increases the 2.4GHz and 5GHz dual-band performance by 100 percent and 30 percent respectively. As for storage, the Mi Wi-Fi router also has the ability to back up images from cameras or smartphones and store them.

The router will support cameras from Sony, Nikon, and Canon, apart from both Android and iOS smartphones. Media stored in the router is also accessible remotely via the Android and iOS apps.


The router has been launched in two different hard disk capacities. The mainstream variant comes with 1TB storage, whereas the higher-end variant comes with an eye-popping 6TB capacity.




WiFi Amplifier

Xiaomi also introduced its Wi-Fi Amplifier, which as expected would work with the MiWiFi, MiWiFi Mini and the new MiWiFi-2 to amplify the router's Wi-Fi range. The device can be plugged in any of the USB ports.

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Xiaomi Launches Yeelight Smart Lamp

The Xiaomi Yeelight Bedside lamp is controllable via smartphone. The lamp throws out light in 16 million colours and comes with a support for gestures to adjust the lamp's brightness, power on/off, and colour change.

 Gestures such as clockwise, anticlockwise has their own function and waiting for you to explore

 This light can be controlled using bluetooth as well

Take a closer Look

Shape like a thick candle

This is the pacakaging 

The sticker on top of the lamp reads "Slide along the edge of the lamp to adjust the brightness" 

The two buttons on top - ON/Off switches and switching scenarios 

The bottom is the product specifications and info

 Closer look at the lamp

 The power port

Power cords

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Xiaomi's MiWiFi Router - Setting Up guide

After power on

a) After booting up, you should see two default WiFI available Xiaomi-xxxx & Xiaomi_xxxx_5G, set your PC's WiFi to "Obtain an IP automatically"

b) Go to WiFi setting and search for Xiaomi_XXXX or Xiaomi_XXXX_5G, there is no password enabled, so you can connect it freely.

c) Connect to one of the two WiFi access point mentioned above;

d) On your browser key in the default router ip 192.168.31.1 or miwifi.com, which should bring you to the router management console; you would be getting the following welcome screen

e) MiWiFi will be able to detect whether you are connected

f) Once connected, you will be asked to key in the SSID name, if you wish to change the default SSID, follow by SSID password, and the MiWiFi console management password.

g) If you are changing your SSID for both 2.4G or 5G, or the subnet from 196.168.x.x to others like 172.168.x.x, every changes will require a reboot of router, after which you'll need to connect to the new SSID, and finally log-in to the MiWiFi management console

Connecting to the Internet
Once you had made configuration changes to Miwifi, you can connect the WAN port of MiWiFi (The lowest port on the router) to the LAN port of your switch, which should be connect through your normal Internet connectivity in you office/home

Make sure both your MiwiFi IP is on the same subnet as your home internet subnet, e.g. if your MiWifi subnet is 192.168.31.1, then your existing network at home/office must be 192.168.x.x

(e.g Your existing WAN/modem gateway is 192.168.1.1, and your network is running in DHCP, if you connect your MiWiFi with 192.168.31.1 as router gateway, all devices connected to the MiWiFi should be assigned 192.168.31.x as IP, if you have DHCP running on MiWiFi)

Setting Up and link to Xiaomi Account

Once you have linked up your Mi Account, you can open brower and type www.miwifi.com, it will redirect you to user log in page, and the UI is the same.

Setting up Mobile Apps for the MiWiFi

You need to download Mi Router app from Mi Market or http://www1.miwifi.com/miwifi_download.html. Once ready you can launch the app,

Download App

 Android Version

http://bigota.miwifi.com/xiaoqiang/client/xqapp.apk

IOS Version       

https://itunes.apple.com/cn/app/id859962702?mt=8&ls=1

Upgrade Firmware

If you are purchasing a new WiFi, you'll likely be getting one shipped with an older version firmware.
Take a look at your router firmware, if they are older than ROM 稳定版 0.7.61, you can download the latest version at - http://www1.miwifi.com/miwifi_download.html

Direct link for Ver 0.7.61 is - http://bigota.miwifi.com/xiaoqiang/rom/brcm4709_hdk_4ea3c_0.7.61b.bin

Here's how to upgrade the ROM
http://bbs.xiaomi.cn/thread-10159544-1-1.html

English Translation of Web-based MiWiFi Management Console
Here's an English translation of the web-based MiWiFi management console, done by Kiswum, please note that some of features may varied as after newer firmware upgrades.

Xiaomi MiWiFi Setup - English Translation

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Xiaomi MiWiFi - More in-depth usage

Note - MiWiFi only comes in Chinese Interface

MiWiFi
Having more than 200 3D movies, 4K titles and lots of music albums, what's the best way to organise your content?

Apart from accessing all contents through online apps or stream services, the other major source of you contents (videos, music and photos) is from your locally stored devices, either a NAS or you IP devices.

You can use both to manage your MiWiFi AC router through a web-interfaced site www.miwifi.com, or through a mobile App (both IOS and Android versions are available). However, both version requires you to log-in with a Xiaomi account (yes, the same one that you use to purchase your Xiaomi Phones or Mi-Tab).

On the mobile app, once you had authorised access for a particular MiWiFi with your Xiaomi account, you can manage your MiWiFi AC router anywhere, as long as you have Internet access.

Managing Through Apps
Once you had authorised your mobile Apps to manage a particular MiWiFi, by logging in through your Xiaomi Account, you can access the MiWiFi directly through the App.

From here, you can view the status of a particular MiWiFi, eith at home or from office. You can browse traffics, which devices is currently connected to the MiWiFi, what speed are they accessing, and what bandwidth individual connection had consumed.

If you are downloading on the MiWiFi, you can also be alerted on completion of downloads.

You can also browse the contents of your MiWiFi, if you allow access to any devices connected to it, after which they can stream content from their devices.

Managing Downloads

The mobile apps has built-in third-party plug-ins where you can activate, and to manage your downloads, currently there are 4 Thunder plug-ins, all require a Thunder account to log-in and manage your movies, TV series onto the 1 TB storage on MiWiFi, if you are TVB fans, you can browse newly released episodes of your TV dramas, and start the download session, while at work; and at the end of the day when you reach home, these contents are already on you MiWiFi, nicely cataloged on your MiWiFi, ready to be playback on your MiTV.

Xiaomi Smart Homes
Xiaomi had just launched their Smart Home series of product, based on "The Internet of Things" design, where you will be able to manage air-con, TV, lights at home, customised to your living habits and lifestyles, all will be managed through the MiWiFi and mobile Apps.

Read this article "After success with phones, Xiaomi now wants to make your home smarter", some products had just been made available for immediate integration.

MiWiFi With MiTV 2
But we will not be looking into these future features of the MiWiFi AC router, we will focus on the tight integration of MiWiFi with the MiTV 2.

Once your MiWiFi was set-up, you can connect your MiTV 2 directly through with 2.4GHz or 5GHz WiFi, since MiWiFi is a dual-band AC router, with 2 separate antenna

Once connected, you can immediately see the MiWiFi icon on the landing page of MiTV, as MiWiFi came with an internal 1TB Harddisk storage, it will shows 1TB storage is available, and how much disk space had been used.

Smart Device featuring OpenWRT

As mention in my last post - Xiaomi MI WiFi Wireless AC Router, the Wireless Router has user programmable smart rules for handling and controlling all the home appliances easily. The device will be featuring OpenWRT-based Operating system with updates rolling out weekly for it. The device has an open plug architecture and SDK so we can expect its developers to come out with many new use cases.

A newly formatted MiWiFi with 1 TB HD will have standard video, music, doc and photo folders already created.

Your Movies

You can transfer your contents by enabling copy access for your device, through the Control console, after which you can copy your content over, through Samba.

Similar to Apple TV, once your movies (3D, HD or 4K) had been copied over, MiWiFi will start indexing all your movies, automatically download metadata and cover art from Xiaomi's services, including movie posters, titles and tagged with each movie. Unfortunately, all these tagging are with Chinese cover arts and movie titles.

Special Note - MiWiFi not only index contents (video, photo & music) from the in-built 1 TB HD, it will also crawl the whole network where it is connected to, and scan through all shared folders and directories on your network and indexed to be made available for playback. Make sure you do not have naked photos or videos shares on your PCs ;) 

Watching Movies

MiWiFi basically keep track of everything, it can also remember where you last pause your movie, and can resume from where you last watch.

Your Music

Similar to movies, MiWiFi's once you had copied your music albums onto the MiWiFi, the OpenWRT-based software will start crawling all tracks, and built all the necessary taggings associated with the tracks. Album cover arts will be tagged, together with song titles, writers etc.

On top of that, if lyrics are available from Xiaomi's own base, they will also be intelligently displayed alongside the music tracks. While not all tracks are available, we noticed most of the popular tracks were tagged.

Your Photos

We have not explored much with the Photo features, but we understand that photos can be synced from photo albums on a Xiaomi Phone, to a Xiaomi Account, and if the MITV 2 is configured to be log-in with the same Xiaomi Account, all photos will be make available on MiWiFi.

Mi-Cloud photo sharing

Photos taken on Xiaomi's Phone are automatically backup onto Mi-Cloud, and you can select who you want to share the photo, e.g. parents, and these photos will later be sync to the photo folders on MiWiFi, your parents can then browse through these Photos on the MiTV, if the MITV was logged in using their own Xiaomi Account.

This guy had provided step-by-step configurations on sharing it on MiTV

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