For Rs-485 you need an external pin to indicate the direction of signal and the internal ttl serial only have rx and tx.
Because USB to RS-485 adapter is so cheap you should consider it!
I did post some try out with different adapters type.
viewtopic.php?p=563861#p563861
At the beginning of that post you will get a document about a water detect module. In the document I use a small PIC cpu to switch the direction of the rs-485 driver.
There is some adapter on the market that switch the direction when the transmit signal go TTL low (SPACE) but that method doesn't work well since there is no output when transmit TTL HIGH (MARK). So I use a small cpu to detect a transmission and switch to receive when the TTL stay high for ~2 character long.
Daniel