I’m new to Home Assistant, but took the plunge and purchased a Pi and usb zwave stick this weekend. I’m super excited to get started and hopefully, one day, contribute to the project!
Installation was super easy and so far, learning the ins-and-outs have been fun. I’ve only scratched the surface with a single light switch for my living room and an outlet plug controlling my Christmas tree. It’s a start 
My question though pertains to remotely accessing my HASS.IO setup while away from my network. Unfortunately, I don’t have cable/dsl that would allow for a straight forward duckdns/port forwarding solution. I’m using the only option available to me - a Verizon Jetpack.
It’s my understanding that Verizon creates a NAT setup that prevents outside traffic from ever reaching a subscriber. I believe there’s a $500 option to allow the mapping, but I’d prefer not to give them any more money. So I’m wondering - could a VPN solution work? Could my Raspberry Pi connect to a VPN server - like OpenVPN, and if so, would that allow me to access my setup from work?
Any help or insight would be appreciated!