I have been playing with my raspberry Pi for a while now, while connected to a TV or a monitor(), but the below guide shows how to connect to its console using a serial cable, this allows me to take it on the road and connect to it from my laptop. Also the serial cable provides power to it so I only need to take my Raspberry Pi and my usb-serial cable (as well as the SD card and WIFI adapter) and I have a complete system on the road.

You will need a usb to serial cable like the: USB to TTL Serial Cable – Debug / Console Cable for Raspberry Pi

I am using my Macbook Air and needed to get the following drives for my usb-serial cable:
http://prolificusa.com/pl-2303hx-drivers/
OR
http://changux.co/osx-installer-to-pl2303-serial-usb-on-osx-lio

Install the drivers and reboot.
Once you plug in your device, open your terminal and you will see the drivers under /dev

// Driver
$sudo dmesg | grep -i "PL-2303"
Password:
PL-2303/X V1.5.0 start, Prolific

// Device
$ls -lrt /dev/tty.usbserial
crw-rw-rw- 1 root wheel 33, 4 Apr 21 15:53 /dev/tty.usbserial

Connect the usb-serial cable to the Raspberry Pi like this:

Ok, now that Raspberry Pi is connected to the usb-serial cable and the this to the computer, let’s start our terminal.

$ screen /dev/tty.usbserial 115200

You should see the Raspberry Pi starting up and its console messages:

Now you can log in and start using your Raspberry Pi, like when it was connected to a TV (of course on command line mode).