Nearly all my hackathon projects were hardware, back in college.

A couple examples (both from HackPrinceton, which had the best EE labs):

* https://blog.cyrusroshan.com/post/electronic-banjo (crowd favorite)

* https://blog.cyrusroshan.com/post/spin-to-win (a "moonshot" idea)

There's something nice about holding your work in your hands. Tangible work is also both easy to explain, and hard to fake. So going the hardware route felt fun, fulfilling, and scored well.

Good times.