SHELDON HACHEY has been making things for as long as he can remember.

Big cardboard houses.

Little duct tape sailboats.

Even self-acted, self-filmed videos he posts on YouTube.

Now the 16-year-old is inventing things he hopes eventually make a big difference in the world.

He’s already getting lots of attention and lots of awards, especially for a creation he hopes someday captures car thieves on camera.

The Halifax student recently won his school’s science prize and a Discovery Centre science and technology award for the invention — inspired by the theft of his uncle’s vehicle and a walk through Pete’s Frootique.

“I was just going through the store and I was thinking of basically detecting things,” the Grade 10 student explains during his lunch break at Ecole secondaire du Sommet.

Ideas about detecting the ripeness of fruit turned to ideas about detecting movement to his eventual idea for his science project — a dice-sized surveillance camera he inserted inside a junkyard dashboard to detect robbers in the act.

“I wanted to make a camera to put into a car that would be basically motion-sensored so that whenever someone would come in, it would record it,” says the teenage whiz, who’s won his school’s science project prize three years in a row and recently tied (with Ellen Song) for the Youth Award at the annual Discovery Awards for Science and Technology.

“I originally wanted to put it into the mirror of the car, but the problem with that is that the camera would actually be looking behind you and it wouldn’t work that well. I also wanted to put it in the steering wheel but the problem with that is you’d always be turning or whatnot, so I found out the best place to put a camera would be in the speed dial.”

So he bought a $40 micro “spy” camera on eBay and inserted it into that junkyard dashboard and hooked it up to a nine-volt battery.

And he’s thought about all the other possibilities since.

“It didn’t take much battery at all,” the dark-haired, long-limbed student explains. “So this way I was thinking of just hooking (it) up to a car battery and it would only take about as much energy as like running a radio and what would happen is that whenever you leave, you turn (on) your car security, like just lock your doors, (and) it would automatically put it on.”

He also envisions iPhone applications for the invention, which he says he hasn’t been able to patent because that’s too expensive.

“I was working on developing an app so that whenever the alarm would go off it would go directly to your phone and to say: ‘There’s somebody in your car, does this person have permission to be in your car?’ and also it would save the video to your iPhone instantly.

“And also I wanted to have it hook up to your TV and then you could download it to a VHS, or DVD player or whatnot.”

Sheldon says this is the way his mind has always worked. He pictures things in his head and tries to make them a reality.

Over the years, his thinking and tinkering has turned into everything from an automatic fish feeder to those cardboard houses he played in and those duct tape boats he floated, and now the car camera device he figures would only add an extra $100 to the cost of vehicles.

His “love” for building things, “improving” things, seems to run in the family.

He remembers watching his father tinker with everyday tools, too.

“My dad always has been building things with his hands, so he likes taking apart lawnmowers and stuff and when he was a kid he would build like lawnmowers that would kind of roll themselves and stuff, so in some sense I have some background in that.”

Now he wants to use his background for good, in big ways and small.

“I really want something that can help people,” he says. “I want to make a difference.

“I walk though the mall and I’m always thinking. Like when people saw the stairs they thought of making an escalator, and there’s a story of somebody that was trying to watch this girl change the diaper of a baby in the washroom and he invented the thing that comes down so that you can put your baby on and change the diaper there.

“So I find those very inspirational because those are things that change the world basically; although it’s small, it’s still something that you see everywhere now and I want to do something like that.”