I seemed to fix the problem by not doing much. The simple fact of using the trace variable in any operation seemed to correct the problem (???).
if I remove the proj.traces.append(trace) line and print the trace variable the textout param appears as None, but as soon as I use the trace variable (even just in an assignment such as: aa = trace ) It fills the textout param with the correct information (sent by the RPi)
You would be correct in assuming I stumbled into this solution, either way its working 