yep --- the 45 volume is a feature it seems of the Google (lots on non-HE posts around about this).
What I needed to do was, before each notification,
- play a 1 sec silent mp3
- raise the volume
- wait 2 seconds
- play my announcement
Because this sucks, I broke out the announcement into a Node-Red function, I call the function with what I want it to say/play and it does all the above. This way I dont have so much extra baggage in each rule I want to use it
Its worked flawlessly since i implemented it. I had the other Google Chome Alive App (cant remember what it was called, probably in this thread) that didnt help.
