Two people. Both engineers, both designers when it's needed, both slightly underslept.
Electrical engineer. Writes the software, owns the signal-processing side, and keeps the project on track when the deadline starts breathing down our necks.
Mechatronics engineer. Lives in the seams between hardware and software — solders the boards, models the parts, writes the code, and trains the model that ties it all together.
We rotate, but here's what usually happens by hour 6 of any hackathon.
We sketch the demo flow before we write a line of code. If we can't draw it on one A4, the project is too big.
Julian wires the hardware and gets a "hello world" off the metal. Lucas scaffolds the repo, the data path, and whatever pipeline the demo will sit on.
Whichever subsystem blocks the demo, both of us pile on. The other systems wait.
One of us records a backup demo. The other rehearses the pitch out loud. Whoever sleeps less presents.
We sometimes invite a third person for events that need a specific skill. If that's you, send a project link and one sentence on why you'd want in.