NodeMcu Communication to RS485 Device using TTL to RS485 converter

Question

Good day everyone,
       I am facing a problem when trying to use nodemcu (Nodemcu ESP8266 Lolin V3) to communicate with an RS485 device. I sent an enquiry frame to the device and got the response in bytes. However, the response is not meaningful as it cannot be converted to readable ASCII characters.

       I used the built in Serial for this purpose. Hence i debug the program by sending the program flow state and data received to a server as shown in the Web UI below :-

The response that i expect is the ASCII bytes:-

AFC54D48355CC030B14ED8D4B459

which is completely different than what is shown in the Web UI above.

Here is the connection and the code that i have tried so far:-

The code :-

#include<ESP8266WiFi.h> 
#include <ESP8266HTTPClient.h>

int enable_pin = 5; //DE and RE pin is jumped together to Nodemcu D1 pin.

String link = "http://someserver.ngrok.io"; //the server

void setup() {
  pinMode(enable_pin,OUTPUT);
  sendActivity("baud_rate_is_set");
  Serial.begin(9600);
  delay(2000);
  digitalWrite(enable_pin,HIGH); //mcu - master : meter - slave
}

void loop() {
  int timeout = 5000;
  int delay_unit = 100;
  byte request[] = {0xb7,0xb7,0xaf,0x3f,0x30,0xb7,0xb4,0xb4,0x36,0x33,0x35,0xb1,0x21,0x8d,0x0a};
  sendActivity("send_enquiry_frame");

  //write
  Serial.write(request,sizeof(request) / sizeof(request[0]));
  digitalWrite(enable_pin,LOW);

  //delay & timeout
  sendActivity("start_waiting_5s");
  int current_delay = 0;
  while(current_delay <= timeout)
  {
    current_delay = current_delay + delay_unit;
    delay(delay_unit);
  }
  sendActivity("done_waiting_5s");

  //get the response part
  if(Serial.available())
  {
    sendActivity("serial_data_available");
    byte serial_receive_buff[200];
    Serial.readBytes(serial_receive_buff,200);
    char buff[200];
    array_to_string(serial_receive_buff,200,buff);
    sendResponse(buff);
  }
  else{
    sendActivity("serial_data_not_available");
  }
  delay(3000);

}

void sendActivity(String act)
{
  HTTPClient http;
  http.begin(link+"/api/activity/"+act);
  int code = http.GET();
}

void sendResponse(String data)
{
  HTTPClient http;
  http.begin(link+"/api/data/"+data);
  int code = http.GET();
}

void array_to_string(byte array[], unsigned int len, char buffer[])
{

    for (unsigned int i = 0; i < len; i++)
    {
        byte nib1 = (array[i] >> 4) & 0x0F;
        byte nib2 = (array[i] >> 0) & 0x0F;
        buffer[i*2+0] = nib1  < 0xA ? '0' + nib1  : 'A' + nib1  - 0xA;
        buffer[i*2+1] = nib2  < 0xA ? '0' + nib2  : 'A' + nib2  - 0xA;
    }
    buffer[len*2] = '\0';
}

Can anyone point out what i messed up ? I am stuck on this problem for few days. Thanks a lot.