FAQ #5

Q: I see a strange date like 85/165/2009 being returned using the simple sample, how do I fix that?

If you run one of the simple examples and you get something like the following debug output then the culprit is the device is not connected correctly.

09/23/2020 10:11:38
RTC lost confidence in the DateTime!
RTC was not actively running, starting now
RTC is older than compile time! (Updating DateTime)
RTC lost confidence in the DateTime!
85/165/2009 37:165:
-0.25-0.25C

Please refer to your device and RTC to make sure all the pins are correctly connected between them including GND. This is a common thing to run into with SPI devices as the SPI interface does not return any communications error information but instead just returns invalid data; so there is no way to bubble up a communications problem.

Please refer to wiki on connecting the devices.