Hey mate,
Are you using an official controller?
when you edited the rc.local file, did you change the “wid” to just “id”? when emulationstation starts, is the top left (player 1) light lit on the controller? does it work ok for emulationstation when it asks you to setup controls for the players?
When I did the config, I have to do via the real terminal, pressing F4 when emulationstation opened, it didn’t seem to work for me when I tried doing via ssh, but I did get it working.
Let me know
Karl