[Ginger Power]

Thanks for the kind words. My first and strongest recommendation would be to abandon vision tracking and auto aimimg. 99% of teams are better off picking a spot on the floor (hard stopped against the tower, at the edge of the batter, or from the out works) and using basic robot-centric sensors to aim. For example a gyro on the arm to tell you what angle it's at. When the shooter goes all the way down you could have it reset the gyro so as to avoid gyro drift. Have a known angle for each shooting position. You will be more accurate as a result of this.

If you implement the Gem 500 with 3 or 4 stages on it, and have an external reduction via chain, you really shouldn't have trouble with back driving the gearbox. I would highly recommend plugging a Cim or mini cim motor into the Gem rather than a servo.

I'm sorry but I'm not sure I know what you mean by "extending the gearbox shaft to reach the other side". If you could explain what you mean by that I'd be happy to other my opinion on a solution.