I have been provided for a school project with both ESP8266-DEV and ESP8266 + USB to RS485 cable, i cant get connection with this cable, i made a little research and found that the best suited cable for this is for example TTL-232R-3V3. Or maybe i'm doing something wrong and RS485 cable should work also. I tried to communicate thru Arduino IDE serial monitor(i installed esp8266 board support to Arduino idle as well).
I also used Arduino uno as a TTL connector and can communicate thru that but i read, that this could damage the device because the arduino tx/rx gives out 5V.
Ollu