Kobo Elipsa - Error communicating with device

I started receiving this error today when I connect the Kobo Elipsa to the computer. Calibre no longer shows which books are loaded on the device but it seems to be able to transfer books to the Elipsa.

Any idea how to resolve it?

calibre, version 6.10.0
ERROR: Error: Error communicating with device

'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0x81 in position 0: invalid start byte

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "calibre\gui2\device.py", line 88, in run
File "calibre\gui2\device.py", line 540, in _books
File "calibre\devices\kobo\driver.py", line 2027, in books
UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0x81 in position 0: invalid start byte