remote execute socket error

Hi, I’m building a system for Maya animators to send their shot work to the Editor and they will be using the Engine as a renderer. It builds levels from templates and LevelSequencers and imports their animation. This is for animation projects, previsualization for TV, movies, etc – not for game design or game production. This tool set is designed for unreal novices so they can get their renders without having to do much inside the Editor.

To that end, I’ve been running remote execution of python scripts from Maya after integrating an example I found on this forum. But after a couple months away from working on this tool set, I’m now getting the following error:

RuntimeError: Remote party failed to attempt the command socket connection!

I double-checked and Enable Remote Execution is turned on in my project settings. I also checked that the socket id numbers were the same in the project settings as they are in the remote_execution.py.

It’s been months since the last time I was testing this but I haven’t changed anything.

This is nuts and bolts of the remote execute function:
(from here: Python - Blender/Maya to UE4 using Remote Execution)

import remote_execution as remote
remote_exec = remote.RemoteExecution()
remote_exec.start()
remote_exec.open_command_connection(remote_exec.remote_nodes)
exec_mode = ‘EvaluateStatement’
results = remote_exec.run_command(str(command), exec_mode=exec_mode)

I’m hoping it’s an easy fix. If you have any insights I’d be very grateful.

Getting the error:
Error: remote_execution : Failed to deserialize JSON"(“version”:1, “magic”: “ue_py”, “type”: “ping”, “source”: "…)