Can confirm the change from pull request #1 corrected the endless ***** I was also getting.
Using: Arduino IDE 1.8.19
Changing the line
Serial2.begin(115200, SERIAL_8N1, 16, 17);
to
Serial2.begin(38400 /*115200*/, SERIAL_8N1, 16, 17);
corrected the issue.
Thanks for the hint @9PEO0xNd
