HA_Time.now showing incorrect date and time on Lilygo S3 T-display

New to Home Assistant so apologies if this isn’t actually a configuration issue. I have HAOS 10.4 (core 2023.8.0) installed on a Dell Optiplex 7050. I installed the ESPHome add-on and added a Lilygo S3 T-display as a device. Following the instructions here: GitHub - landonr/lilygo-tdisplays3-esphome: tdisplay s3 170x320 running esphome using patched tft_espi, I successfully flashed the display but the date and time are incorrect:

.
Here’s the config file for the device.

esphome:
  name: s3

external_components:
  - source: github://landonr/lilygo-tdisplays3-esphome
    components: [tdisplays3]

esp32:
  board: esp32-s3-devkitc-1
  variant: esp32s3
  framework:
    type: arduino

# Enable Home Assistant API
api:

ota:
  password: "6ada29f6f41ce1685d29d406efd25fa4"

wifi:
  ssid: !secret wifi_ssid
  password: !secret wifi_password

time:
  - platform: homeassistant
    id: ha_time

switch:
  - platform: gpio
    pin: GPIO38
    name: "Backlight"
    id: backlight
    internal: true
    restore_mode: RESTORE_DEFAULT_ON

font:
  - file: "gfonts://Roboto"
    id: roboto
    size: 30

display:
  - platform: tdisplays3
    id: disp
    update_interval: 1s
    rotation: 270
    lambda: |-
      it.printf(20, 70, id(roboto), Color(255, 255, 255), id(ha_time).now().strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S").c_str());
    

The only edit I made to the file was to change the color from red to white.
I’ve no idea where this date-time came from.

Might need to wait until the time has in fact synced from HA before you can display?

Still, quite strange because you have 45 seconds after the Epoch on that clock.

Problem solved by simply adding logger to configuration file. Still have no idea where the date and time that were previously being displayed came from.

it just needed to sync and you didn’t wait.

With the startup time displayed being 1969, you could say it was r truly retro clock.

Wouldn’t sync until logger was added. I had waited for several hours.