We have always run a camera on the back of our big baler with a seperate video monitor in the cab of our old reliable John Deere 8400.  With a quality camera (with low-light LEDs) we could always see the complete bale accumulator and monitor any problems with bale ties etc.

My cousin recently bought a brand new John Deere 8225R series tractor with GreenStar 3 and a 2630 terminal/monitor.  I saw where the monitor supports one video in.  He helped us get a large number of bales out with this new tractor attached to his big square baler.  He asked for nothing in return.  With our enthusiasm for the video camera on our 8400 I figured the least I could do would be to surprise him and add the functionality of video monitoring of his baler on his new R-series tractor.

Commercial adapter cables that attach video cameras to the 2630 terminal are mentioned and even advertised on the internet.  However, there is limited to no availability due to parts shortages and if you can get one they cost upwards of $160 just for the adapter harness.  I even ordered one from A&I advertised as being compatible with CabCAM.  A&I canceled my backorder as unavailable.

So, in reading the GreenStar 3 manual I saw where the 26-pin video in plug terminal is described as offering video signal in on pins 8 and 14 (pin 8 is video +, Pin 14 is video -).  It can accept either NTSC or PAL input (works anywhere on the globe).

Upon examining the video in plug on the back of the terminal I noticed that pins 8 and 14 are immediately adjacent to each other.  The pins have very small numbers molded into the connector plastic and in order to read them you may have to hold the unit out in broad sunlight or use a magnifying lamp.  The pins looked similar sized to those pins used on computer motherboards for USB and front-panel connectors so I tried some USB pin plugs on them.  Those were too tight.  So next I tried a two-pin fan connector as used by computer case cooling fans to plug into motherboard fan headers or Molex adapters.  The spacing was about perfect and the pins fit well.  I cleaned up the unused portions of the white plastic connector on a belt sander and everything fit just right.  Even the red lead corresponded to video + (pin 8) and the black lead corresponded to the video - (pin 14).

Left on it's own this connector would easily fall of the pins and could also be yanked out of the socket during regular use.  I noticed the rubber dust cap that shipped with the 2630 terminal had molded pin holes on the underside that almost matched the wire lead locations of the two-pin plug.  So I took an awl and poked two holes through the factory dust cap at the pin locations.

Then it was a simple matter to thread the leads through these holes resulting in a clean, captive installation of the two-pin connector with a dust-proof seal and a nice snug fit, all provided by the factory dust cap.

Then it was simply a matter of soldering a standard RCA jack connector I had laying around to the red and black leads along with some adhesive-lined heat shrink.  And woola!  A home-brewed yet high-quality video connector for the Greenstar 2630 monitor.

The 2630 video screen image depiction is good but not as efficient as it could be.  The aspect ratio appears to be 4:3 and there is quite a bit of wasted screen area taken up by a yellow border allowing contrast setting and that's about it.  The light pollution caused by the yellow borders are distracting when baling at night.  The manual does mention that a full-screen can be obtained by using some sort of screen layout manager.  If I can figure that one out I'll post another photo of that too.  EDIT:  I was wrong. There seems to be no way to get full screen video as of this date.

A second video input would be nice too. And as long as we're dreaming here a split-screen option with two video inputs would be great for the circumstances where you want to monitor two cameras at once without having to toggle the screen back and forth (which again isn't even an option at this point.  I do have a video switching device for use in multi-camera installations but it just adds one more component and momentary switch to deal with.

Hope this post helps sombody with a 2630 Greenstar terminal who wants to save some time and money adding a camera.